#a custom character with actual agency but also enough free-form personalization that you don’t feel railroaded

[vounoura]

the tightrope of making a PC feel like a real character with agency and motivations while also allowing players the freedom to make and play who they want and the intense limitations that imposes is something I find so utterly fascinating in RPGs that focus on choice-based stories bc every game / series attacks it a little bit differently

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: January 28th, 2021 (Part 2)

Here we’ve got asks that aren’t to ask a question but are just really nice messages. Thank you all for sending us such kind comments ;v;. It’s seriously heartwarming to see so many people having good experiences with the game. I don’t even know what to say to such sweet responses.

We’ll keep doing our best and thank you again to each and every one of you for giving Our Life a chance ❤!

Hello! I've been following this account and have been following the development of 'Our Life' for a few months now, and I just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work and dedication you have put into the game. It astonishes me how much choice you have during the sequence of Our Life and am excited to play the full version now, I am downloading it as I write this message. I've had a great time seeing the demo transition into to the full game and just wanted to write two words. Thank you.

Anhhhhffbgdfbhujk!!! Congratulations on the release, I’m playing the game right now! Thank you all for your hard work and I can’t wait for the Step 3 DLC to come out, I’ll probably wait for the Step 3 DLC to come out to experience everything, but until then, I still have a lot to play. Thank you once again!

finished my first playthrough just now. it just felt so wholesome ??? 100/10 would do it again. i laughed. i cried. i got angry. i felt second-hand embrassment— i got so into it i was left in literal tears after getting my first ending. the art, the storyline, the music, and COVE HOLDEN– UGH IT WAS LITERAL PERFECTION ❤ THE WAIT WAS WORTH IT. THANK YOU FOR MAKING SUCH AN AMAZING GAME 🥺😭 this made my 2020 better, i can't wait for step 4 in 2021 ❤❤

So I was following you guys on itchio for years and uhh did I stay up til 6 am on a school night to finish the game? Yes. Did I sob my eyes out during step 3 as a 20 year old having doubts about life and adulthood? Absolutely. I can't form proper sentences right now due to lack of sleep but just wanted to say thank you for making it. I honestly feel lighter and I feel like it changed my views on future to be more optimistic... I can't wait to replay it! Thanks again!

I love how Our Life turned out!! I keep replaying it and can't stop squeaking and giggling!! Thank You for creating it ♥

okay i have actually fallen in love with cove and cannot WAIT to marry him 😭

Hi! I played through 'Our Life' yesterday and  I just wanna say how refreshing it was to be able to have Cove be 'high initiative' and also have so many opportunities to initiate affection from the player character! As a pretty flirtatious/affectionate person myself, I notice that a lot of VNs don't give players that agency, and affection can be kinda 'carrot on a stick' if that makes sense. You guys did an awesome job! I look forward to seeing if there are more of those moments in Step 3 & 4 :)

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the option to choose Cove's level of initiative in step 3! As much I love the option to choose I personally enjoy have the romanced character take the lead without my input so when I got to step 3 and had to option to make it so that Cove initiated affection without as much input from me I was really happy! You guys seriously added so much freedom in terms of choices, it's almost baffling that the only thing you have to pay for is optional DLC!

I absolutely loved everything about the game and I really want congratulate the team for making the game such a satisfying experience.

I look forward to step 4

❤️❤️❤️❤️

* and sorry for my bad English

Just finished my first play through and I loved it! I've been looking forward to the game and it definitely was worth the wait. Thank you all for your hard work and can't wait for the extra dlc!

Till then, hope you guys gets some well deserved rest🤗

Love you guys, thank you so much for your hard work. :)

Ok, so I just finished Our Life and, wow. I have never cried at a video game before, ever. Thank you so, so much! Its one of my favorites.

this isn't a question, but i just wanted to say how much i enjoyed our life 🥺 i've been patiently looking forward to the full game for a few months now, and i couldn't be happier with it! i've only played through it once so far but the outcomes of the choices i made were all so soft and wholesome 💗 i can tell that everyone who was involved really worked hard and you all did an incredible job! i can't wait to see what else is in store 👍

i’d just like to say how addictive our life is!!! i constantly played it during quarantine and now playing the full release is so amazing to me!! i love that i’m still discovering dialogue bits with different personalities and actions!!! i have to admit that i’ve been wishing the day to pass faster all day during school so i could go home and play again. mentally i’m not the healthiest and our life being released has boosted it up so much, thank you for creating such an amazing game!!!!!

Hey, I just wanna say I played our life two times and it still give me the same feelings. I was really looking forward to this game before it came out and I kept on replaying the demo. This game is such an amazing experience and I feel so happy playing it. I am not really a person good with words unfortunately but I do honestly love this more than anything in the world. Thank you for making it and I hope that you will continue to make more games like our life. This game really makes me happy and I can't thank you enough

Just wanted to say that Our Life really made me feel seen as an 18 year old trans man who's been struggling with change as of late and I can't thank you guys enough for it. I just finished the main story and currently released DLC's and gosh, I can really only say... woah. Just, woah. The messages are somehow exactly what I needed to hear right now, and they brought me a lot of comfort in this really weird and confusing time in my life. Can't wait to see what comes next in this lovely story <3

I am honestly in love with Our Life. The graphics, the soundtrack its just *chef's kiss* It was so worth the wait for it. I can't wait for step 4. Keep up the good work GB Patch!

good people i have just finished Our Life and let me say, it was beautiful. rarely have such non-fantastical moments (and even some fantastical moments) brought me to tears like this game has, and i don't even have the dlc (yet). i don't know how you did it but it felt like i was playing a slice of life anime. i had waited with baited breath to play this since i played the demo and my expectations were not just met but surpassed. from the bottom of my heart thank you for this game

I found the game by chance and I am so so glad I did. It’s so inclusive and made me feel so incredibly seen. Seeing that my gender identity and sexuality were possible just meant the absolute world to me. I’ve never seen something like this and it just made me so incredibly happy. Thank you for the absolutely amazing game and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Hello! I downloaded Our life earlier this week and I'm only now getting the chance to play it (Very busy and stressful week) I'm so excited to play and I wanna say thank you for making this adorable game!

I just finished my first playthrough of Our Life and I can't even express how much I love it. Cove is absolutely precious and has killed me several times, and the art and soundtrack is beautiful. I love all the small different choices. I'm very interested in the Derek and Baxter DLCs and the rest, can't wait!!!!!!

thank you for "Our Life Beginnings & Always" it has to be one of the best visual novels i ever have played and i just dont want it to end (i know it will, but damn it! i want to have a wedding night, have children and die of old age with cole! XD) when i play it it always makes me tear up (in a good way) and i am most definetly going to buy all the dlc that you make! thank you for this lovely game and all the work that went into it! (ps: i also loved "lake of voices" )

You guys are incredibly talented and im very proud of you all! You've really outdone yourselves w/ OL and i cant wait to see whats next to come for you all :)

i really love that you can be trans in Our Life! not a lot of games do that so i just wanted to say thank you!

Guuyyss!! I just wanna say! Thank you sm for the headscarf option in the MC creator! I especially loved that little detail where MC quickly slips the headscarf on before greeting Cove, I've never felt so immersed :'D Not that the rest of the game wasn't immersive btw, but since I wear my hijab most of the time that little addition really felt like something I would do! So thank you for that <3

I've been watching "Our Life: Beginnings & Always" development for quite some time, and I gotta say its wild to see it finally release. Its so unique in the way relationships work- even character creation. I've cried multiple times over this game while playing. I can't thank y'all enough for a game with these kind of mechanics, and representation. its rare I get to feel im really playing as myself in games like these. Everyones outdone themselves. this'll certainly be one I keep coming back to.

I've been following the development of Our Life from way back when the first demo dropped and it still blows my mind how many choices and customizations there are (love that update for the MC's bedroom btw!) and the fact that the game remembers them - it really feels like your very own coming of age story! I was so immersed I cried at the end :') Can't believe I experienced this game for free lol. I can't wait for future DLCs and Step 4! Good luck with all your upcoming projects dev team!!

Just wanted to say I love Our Life and I'm thankful it exists. Thank you so much! I love the little world you created and all the people in it. Especially Cove! This game makes me so happy!

Just poping in to say hi and that ilu guys ^^, remember to take care of yourselves!

Hi!! I just wanna thank you for creating such an amazing game. Our Life is one of the few dating sims I’ve found that let’s me be a male mc, it’s really hard to find dating sims that let me be gay. Our Life is my new favorite dating sim to just sit down and playthrough whenever I’m having a bad day so I just wanted to let y’all know how much I appreciate all you’ve done. 🤍

Fan from australia here

Just wanted to reach out and let you know how important this game has been to me. I came across it at a really rough time ( that I’m still going through ) and it’s been one of the things that’s driven me to get up and out of bed sometimes.

This game and cove both hold a very special place in my heart and I can’t wait to see more of him in the DLC and Step 4

Much love ♥️

I know this isnt exactly the main focus of the game, but i really love how we can customise the mc personality wise! This is the first time i've played a game like this where the mc actually does and says exactly what I would do and say in certain situations and its such a breath of fresh air!! It's also so cool how the other characters can pick up on it!!

Cove Holden saved 2020 (my 2020 anyways) I would die for him

Sorry for this being out of the blue, but after playing through Our Life I wanted to thank you for the experience. I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game that has made me cry happy tears TWICE lol. It’s beautiful, scenic, inclusive, and absolutely amazing..have a great rest of 2020 and I honestly cannot wait for the rest of it :,) (ps. The ending song is stuck in my head)

I think you guys might've ruined visual novels for me forever. I'm not sure I'll be able to play another without comparing it to Our Life and I know if I do that I'll be disappointed every time because of how amazing it is. I bought the DLCs before playing the base game it's one of the best impulsive purchases I've ever made

Thank you so much for making our life! It's my favorite visual novel ever and I just can't articulate how much being able to just be honest with my responses instead of going for whatever would make the love interest happy means to me? I reccomended it to evry friend I have that plays visual novels because this is the best one I've ever played!

Just wanted to say that I absolutely adore this game! The childhood friends tropes is my favorite thing and this game delivers! Cove is the sweetest thing, infact all the boys are good boys. Super excited for all upcoming dlcs!

Hi, I just want to thank you for making such an amazing game like Our Life. Tbh, I was following the game’s development for a while, but me and my family moved away from my childhood town just a few days before release, so I really connected to this game. You all did amazing!

hey just wanted to know that i completely loved ol: b&a and it was so good and love cove more than i’ve liked any fictional character, it’s now my comfort media. thank you so much

hi i just wanna say i really enjoyed all of the representation in our life b&a! there were characters with a lot of different body shapes, pic characters, lgbtq+ characters, and you get to choose your own pronouns and sexuality!!! so tysm!!

This isn't a question, I just wanted to say that Our Life is incredible. Ever since I finished it, I've been looking for other visual novels to play so I don't play OL so often that I start memorizing the lines before all the DLC comes out, but I keep coming back to it. It's really one of a kind, I think you all ruined other visual novels for me because I haven't enjoyed another VN like I have this one since I read it ❤.

i think our life b&a is the first game where i felt like cove loved me, not the character i play as which is really nice for someone with kinda low self esteem so THANK YOU

I’ve been playing Our Life practically nonstop since yesterday. I just want everyone who worked on it to know how much the LGBTQ inclusivity means to me. As a closeted trans ace guy in an unsupportive household, I can’t emphasize how much of a comfort this game has been to me. Everything about it is so wholesome and heartfelt. I’m excited to see what other games you make in the future 💙

- A demibiromantic ace transgender man who may or may not have cried over the option to be myself in a game for the first time ever

Csn i just say i really appreciate how you handled MC deciding to use they/them at different stages. Mainly because alot of games don't pay much attention to the body the mc was assigned at birth if they player chooses nonbinary like it does with male/female. And it was just nice to be able to play an mc who just thought gender was kinda 'meh' for them but still felt good about the body they were born with (like myself). I guesd it boils down I'm really appreciative of the hard work it must've taken for you to make all those options possible & still have them matter.

I just wanted to thank you all for Our Life. My mental health hasn't been in a good place recently and it has become my favorite form of escapism/way to cheer up. It's idyllic setting and fantastic characters are such a good way to wind down, I love it. Also, I've been dreading 2021 due to classes starting and general stress, but the DLC and your next project have given me something to actually look forward to :). I'm so excited for them and now I actually have a reason to be happy that it's 2021. Sorry if this message is a bit weird, I just wanted to thank the team for their hard work and for creating something so incredible <3

I've gotta say this is one of the most repayable games I've ever played, if not the most. Usually after i do a playthrough or two of a game i have to wait awhile before playing again otherwise it feels stale. But i haven't had that problem with our life because of the sheer ammount of player agency. Everyone who works on tbe game should feel incredibly proud of themselves because you've created something amazing.

I just wanted to say thank you for Our Life. I'm sure you get this a lot, but it really pulled me out of a mentally tough spot in my life. So thank you.

who needs therapy when you have our life: beginnings and always? haha no but seriously this game is my comfort game, and even though i can’t join your patreon at the moment please know i am always supporting you and i am so excited to see everything you have in store! everyone who works on the games is so so talented

All DLCs have nice content. 😡😡

And I love them all!!💗💗💗💖💖💖💕💕💕

[thesevenseraphs]

Director’s Cut: Part II

Hey everyone,

This is Director’s Cut – Part II, a now mega-long update looking at the last six months of Destiny 2 and looking ahead to Shadowkeep, and maybe a bit beyond. If you missed Part I and have an afternoon to yourself, go check it out. 

As the first section grew in length, I figured this section would be the last one. But at some point Avengers wasn’t going to be split into Infinity War and Endgame, either. So there will be another part. I love you 3000.

Looking Ahead (to Shadowkeep)

This fall is a necessary first step in turning Destiny 2 into the game we want it to be.  

It’s been a busy year, so let’s recap:

We assumed publishing control of Destiny and wanted to get something new into your hands as quickly as possible (Shadowkeep!)

We paired it with a free entry point in New Light to welcome new Guardians into the fold.

We wanted to bring Destiny 2 to new platforms to keep heading toward the you can play Destiny anywhere dream (Steam and Google Stadia).

We’re taking the initial steps toward building Destiny as a single, evolving world.

And we’re doing all of this while cranking on a bunch of the systems changes we’ve talked about and will continue to talk about heading into Shadowkeep.

Here’s where we’re going this fall.

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF THE RPG: ADD DEPTH, IMPROVE CUSTOMIZATION

We want to give people who love the RPG aspect of Destiny (like many of us) more stats and depth on the character sheet to sink their teeth into. We want to give players more agency over how they look. We also want armor to have that deep pursuit players love about Destiny—which brings the victory of finding their perfect roll.

Let’s Talk About Armor, Part I: Mods, Stats, and Tradeoffs

In order to allow players to independently pursue gameplay mods and further customize their Guardian fashion, a lot of work has been done to update armor for this fall. We’ve refactored a number of the stats in the game, we’ve overhauled the UI, and we’ve begun to separate capabilities from aesthetics.

Time-out.

Before I go on, I want to interject: It seems like some comments from part I around MTX are being misconstrued. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Maybe it felt too ambiguous. Let me try and clear this up before we get into armor.  

Destiny has and will continue to have Weapons, Armor, Ghosts, Ships, Sparrows, and Shaders that you can earn from activities to prove to the people looking at your character that you did the thing, whatever that thing is: I beat the Raid a bunch; I earned Iron Banner gear; I played a ton of Crucible; I wanted to gather rain in my shoulder pads so I played Gambit a ton; I made a sweet set of Astroshaman gear at the Rune table; I farmed that Strike for the Mindbender roll that makes people rage; et cetera. 

Let me be crystal clear: That isn’t changing.  

What we are doing with the new armor system is saying: Find the perks you want, find the armor look you want, (from the megalist of currently available Destiny 2 armor) and pursue that armor to get the elements/stats you want and combine them to make your Guardian.  

Destiny also has an MTX store that houses things like Sparrows, Ships, Emotes, Ghost Holograms, Weapon and Universal Ornaments. The items in that store rotate and can be purchased with Silver or Bright Dust. And starting this fall, Bright Dust is just another in-game currency that you can earn by completing Bounties, instead of buying a bunch of engrams and sharding them to generate Dust.  

In Shadowkeep, there are armor sets, weapons, Ghost, Ships, and Sparrows coming from the destinations and activities.  

Time-in. Back to Armor.

We started out by looking at what period in Destiny’s history was a good starting place for evolving the stat game (we felt like it was The Taken King/Rise of Iron) and what principles were guiding our new designs (we want to separate gameplay and aesthetics to grant more agency over both). 

There was a deep dive stream about this topic on August 14, but let’s recap some of the high-level points.

Armor now has an Energy meter ranging from 1–10.

You can use materials and currency to level up the Energy value on a given piece of armor.

Mods have both an Energy cost and an elemental affinity. In order for a mod to be equipped, your armor needs to have rolled the correct element and have enough Energy available  (e.g., Hand Cannon Reloader costs three Void Energy to equip, so your armor must have rolled Void and have three Energy available in order to use it).

Fundamentally, this means we have additional vectors for tuning things like mods. We could tune their effect (how much speed does the reload effect add?), we could tune their cost (how expensive is this mod to socket?), we could add mods to the pool for a different affinity, et cetera.

When you acquire a mod from the game, it’s like getting a perk that you can put on all armor. So once you’ve found Enhanced Hand Cannon Reloader from pinnacle activities (enhanced perks will come only from pinnacle activities), you’ll be able to socket that mod into new armor that meets its criteria (the mod is not consumed and can be socketed in and out at a small cost).

Here are the elements of armor that can roll randomly:

Elemental affinity rolls between Solar, Arc, and Void

Armor’s starting Energy value can roll randomly as well (they can all be leveled to 10)

Stats all roll random values (intellect, discipline, strength, mobility, resilience, and recovery)

Like in The Taken King, the stats will have break points that decrease their cooldowns (yes, your Sparrow now shows up on the character sheet).

Begin Math Time:

Today in Destiny 2, the base recharge rates convert to a stat value of 30 in the new system. Getting to 30 isn’t too difficult, though of course some people (but certainly not you!) will ride the RNG roller coaster to get the stat they really want to 30. By chasing a good stat roll, you can achieve the fast recharge rates available in the game today without needing to use mods. It is totally possible to put together a +100 intellect build (100 is the cap) without socketing a single mod. Some of the new mods will provide +10 to a given stat to help you shore up stats you care about.

But, that specialization may come with a price. Because you’ve specialized in intellect, you may be making tradeoffs for other stats (e.g., grenades come back slower or something—it really depends on your stat rolls). But if your grenades came back slower, then maybe that Demolitionist perk that you’ve been dismantling (I know, I know, Demolitionist is actually pretty good on non-Primary weapons!) would start to look appealing.

End Math Time.

We’ve made a bunch of armor in Destiny, and we didn’t want to leave behind any of the armor that players can currently pursue. So, we’ve also updated every new drop in the game to integrate and leverage the new system. This means if you want to go back and get the small Titan shoulder pads from Sloane on Titan, you can go chase a roll of them that uses the new system.

A number of the current mods will not work in the new armor that’s dropping this fall. But those mods aren’t being deprecated at this time. For example, your Super mods on your current armor will still work, but Super mods cannot be socketed into the new armor (you could socket your armor with intellect mods instead, though).

We did this because, while we think the evolutions we’re making to armor are a great step for Destiny over the long haul, we want you to decide when you migrate to them.

Part II: The Armor Migration Amplifying depth and choice via the new stats system ushers in some changes to armor. We’ve converted all current Destiny armor to use the stats, so cooldown durations will change as we migrate to the new system. You’ll be able to see the cooldown timers of your legacy armor when Shadowkeep’s patch goes live.

Here’s what we don’t want to happen: you feeling like “the game deprecated my old armor and perks; that time I spent playing Forsaken and its Annual Pass content was a waste, since all of the perks on the armor got turned off while Bungie forcibly migrated to this new system.”

Here’s how we hope this works:

If you’re a pretty hardcore player (or really lucky!) and have a set of armor today with perfect-for-you perks (like a fully loaded Enhanced Gun You Like set of perks), I think you’re going to keep using them for a while. I certainly expect the World First raid teams are going to go in with Forsaken-era gear that they’ve infused up throughout their Shadowkeep Power progression.

As the weeks go by and players approach the Shadowkeep Power cap and start finding mods with enhanced perks, we think that’s when our most invested, progression-chasing players will start to move over. Players can totally mix and match between new armor and the armor they have today as well.

For players without perfectly rolled gear, we think the transition to the new armor system is one they’ll make pretty quickly. In our long-form playtesting, our internal teams (not Velveeta—these are other internal players and playtesters. Sidebar: I’m real disappointed I missed out on the “kraftiest” opportunity in Part I. Good catch, Reddit!) have found that they’ve used their current armor on their “main” Guardian but rapidly switched to Armor 2.0 on their less-played alts.

Remember LiveJournal? Let’s do it.

With how I play, it’s a crude mix of fashion, function, and economic efficiency. I rarely invest resources in an item until it’s an item I know I want to use. I don’t infuse very often unless I need a specific piece/roll for an activity. I do not have a favorite class, I play all three. I tend to rotate them based on what is most effective or needed for group play in a given moment. I personally love it when the game gets hard, and I feel as if we would benefit from more challenge (I really liked how Contest mode enforced an action game skill component on World First attempts!). I totally have my favorite weapon archetypes (which I’ll spare you), and I get really frustrated as a player when there is an archetype I feel like I absolutely have to use all the time because it is far and away the most efficient thing. This is because I do—when playing content that matters—have to be using the most efficient thing. This creates some interesting discussions with the team at work when they create something that is super fun but isn’t actually efficient to use. I will totally mess around and get a triple double in patrol with a weird weapon, but the weird stuff isn’t getting used in a Crown of Sorrows group early in the season. Even then, I want to get through that content as quickly as I can.

My characters generally look HIDEOUS on the climb, and then I start to make them look good again once I get to the end game (and since I’m color-blind, my friends think my characters look pretty hideous in the end game, too). I think for me, I’ll shelve my nicely rolled items, delete everything that I wouldn’t wear raiding, and start using new equipment while I power up and find some looks I like—and then, when it’s time to go on JacketQuest, I’ll infuse up my well-rolled raiding equipment.

End of LiveJournal post.

Back to what I started this with—we want the transition to ultimately be your choice, one that you decide to make when you want to make it. Maybe you’re ready to start tinkering with stats. Maybe you really want to start combining universal ornaments and currently dropping armor to up your fashion game. Or maybe, like me, you’ll do both at the same time (but hopefully with less mocking from your so-called friends).

THE PURSUIT OF POWER: INCREASING PLAYER AGENCY

We’d like the act of chasing Power and stats for your build to be something you have a bit more agency over. Not a full-blown “play whatever you want all the time”—because that means people just find the most efficient thing, rather than dipping their toes into a bunch of different activities—but certainly less restrictive than it’s been in the past.

We’ve also had a long-standing challenge in Destiny of making XP matter, and that feels like a real growth opportunity for us to dig into something we’ve wanted to look at for a while.

This section discusses Power and the changes coming to it this Fall.  

Part I: Powerful Sources, Primes, and the World Like I mentioned in Part I, the number of powerful sources in Destiny 2 ballooned during the annual pass. We’re curating down the sources in Shadowkeep. Our target is to get the number of powerful sources closer to Forsaken-launch levels. In Forsaken, as you over-leveled an activity (meaning your Power gets higher than the activity), the activity’s rewards would become less valuable (the inverse was also true for being under-leveled). In Shadowkeep, we’ve changed that. Instead, the system will advertise a consistent expected powerful reward, regardless of your Power relative to it.

Over the years, we’ve come to discuss several parts of Destiny in terms of short-, medium-, and long-term goals.

In the simplest terms: Short-term goals can be completed in a night or a week, medium-term goals can take several weeks, and long-term goals can take anywhere from a Season to several Seasons. For some folks (like me), getting good at a part of the game may take a lifetime (that’s a personal-mastery goal).

We think reaching max Power can be a medium-term goal for Power-progression-focused players. For those players, we hope pursuit of stats and someday trying out new builds is their long-term goal. I say “someday,” because while we’re taking our first steps in buildcrafting with a new armor/mod framework this Fall, I think we’re going to learn a bunch about what making a viable build in Destiny requires. You’re going to surprise us with crazy, creative things we’ve never seen once this is live—we’re all looking forward to it.

Prime Engrams We’re doing some minor housekeeping on Prime Engrams. They’ll begin dropping once you hit 900, and you’ll accumulate charges for them as you make your way from 750 to 900. We’ve increased the number of Prime Engrams you can earn in a given week and rebalanced the value of each one to account for the increase in volume.

World Drops As far as contributing to your Power level, world drops often feel like a waste. To get away from that, we’ve made some changes that allow these drops to help players progress beyond the soft cap. World drops in Shadowkeep will have a chance to drop at a player’s current Power level.

Here’s an example: A player has an overall Power level of 912. Gloves are their lowest slot at 906. A player might open a Legendary engram and receive 912 gloves (an increase of 6 Power).

We’re making this change because we feel like the world Legendaries are a little undervalued at the moment. This isn’t some grand accelerant for Power progression, but rather a little quality-of-life experiment to reward your free-roaming adventures or random Legendary-activity drops.

Part II: Preparing for New Light One of the essential parts of New Light is crushing the barriers between friends. Today, one of those barriers is the Power level.

To players, Power level can mean “we have different goals, so we don't play together.” A new character starting at 10 Power would naturally feel that they had to go play all this other content—and in many, many hours you can play with the friend who recommended the game to you.

That does not sound very sweet. It’s like telling someone to play a MOBA and then saying “we’ll play with you in 100 hours when you’ve learned to last hit.” (This is what my friends said to me. Do I have bad friends? As I’m writing this, I’m starting to wonder.)

That’s not what we want in New Light.

We want to get new players and veterans colliding quickly. After Black Armory, we made a deliberate choice to try to do this with each Season. Both Season of the Drifter and Season of Opulence had bounties to boost up players’ Power levels. With New Light and Shadowkeep being bigger moments of collision, we’re continuing that philosophy, but optimizing the mechanics to fit the moment.

We’re setting the Power this Fall to 750 for both returning and new players. We want you to all be together when Shadowkeep opens. Here’s what this means:

Every single item in the game is being raised to a Power floor of 750 when Shadowkeep and New Light launch. 

Every item in your inventory (and vault) is going to automatically jump to 750.

It's like a free global burst of infusion for all players.

Which means that right now, you could (should!) stop spending currency to infuse your gear sets or that C-tier of weapons that you're keeping around until the patch notes just in case they are going to be good after the changes (there are many buffs coming and it is very tempting to spoil a bunch of them, but I said this wasn’t gonna be the patch notes!).

Part III: More Power, More Problems (We originally had this as Mo’ instead of More, but I changed it upon the sad realization that there is an entire generation of players who missed out on Biggie, Puffy, and Mase in the Bad Boy era. Yes, it’s kind of weird that I changed this and left the Highlander reference in. Especially when neither is T for Teen.)

I’m the first to say it: Raising the Power of all players globally is indicative of a greater problem. It’s real weird that someone will boot up New Light for the first time and immediately be 750.  

The capital P Power level in Destiny (or Light as it was called in D1) has been asked to do a lot over the years. For a time in Destiny 1, it was one of the only things players had to pursue. In D1, Power/Light meant something in terms of achievement—but that badge of honor had its problems (forever 29 via raid boots, etc).

Destiny 1 put the Light/Power level over the player’s head and drove players to raid and raise it. Over time, we gave players other paths to raising their Light/Power (Nightfall, Iron Banner). We took Light off the nameplate and made it three digits in The Taken King, trying to turn Light into something more like a three-digit item level, but without the stat budgeting assigned to it where the stats dictate true character power.

At D2 launch, we shortened the Power climb, over-simplified the game, made it too easy to get items, focused on bringing new players in, and hoped that players would pursue looks alone as their endgame (we were wrong!) while we continued to build features like what would become Forsaken Triumphs.

During that period, we also democratized Power so that players didn’t need to raid or play Nightfall to reach max Power. They could kind of just do any weekly. Forsaken introduced gold sources onto the map, and over the course of the year, the number of powerful sources continued to increase.

See, Power has a lot to do with the amount of damage players can both deal and receive. In fact, it's the biggest factor in it. It’s also been the thing to pursue. Our gameplay specialists—the roles where dedicated Destiny players come in and participate in long-form playtesting with their imported-from-home character—frequently point out that they can’t engage with a number of parts of the game ’til they’ve “completed the Power climb.” Over the years, we’ve made the Power climb shorter and shorter. We’ve made it easier and easier to reach max Power.

We’ve also introduced things like Triumphs, titles, and Collections to provide additional stuff to do as the prestige of Power waned.

In Shadowkeep, we’re trying something a little different.

First, we’re introducing a Seasonal Artifact, unique and thematic to each Season.

As the artifact levels up, it can do a few things: First, it becomes a source of seasonal artifact mods—unique mods that can be equipped only during that Artifact’s season. These mods may be brand new experimental mods or powerful mods with reduced energy cost enabling players (and us!) to experiment further in the buildcrafting space.

Second, the seasonal artifact can award players a Power bonus, but that bonus is not applied to gear (nor does it increase the Power of future drops), but instead to all of your characters. This is meant to give players who can’t or don’t want to play pinnacle activities a seasonal path to Power. This way, even if a player doesn’t play the raid, Iron Banner, or the [REDACTED], they can still have a high Power value for the Season. Leveling the artifact to raise your Power is meant to be Seasonal character growth. Each Season, we’ll have a new artifact with new mods that change how you play—and the Power bonus will reset.

In addition to curating the list of powerful sources, Shadowkeep will also introduce pinnacle powerful sources. These sources are the only way to earn gear drops above power 950 in Season 8.

Here's the thinking: Pinnacle reward sites can award players Power above 950. This is a way of reclaiming a little bit of the character Power prestige that the initial D1 Power climb created. If you inspect a player and see their gear is 960, you know they’ve done a bunch of pinnacle activities. It’s worth mentioning that as you raise your Power via pinnacle activities, other powerful reward sites will continue to drop powerful sidegrades.

All of this said, Power in Destiny 2 is still imperfect. We’re making some adjustments to it this year for Shadowkeep: things like Seasonal Power bonuses and pinnacle activities awarding pinnacle Power. But when we look to the future, we feel like the Power system may benefit from a rework further down the road. There’s real potential in creating more agency for players, figuring out if Power should be prestigious or not, and taking on the challenge of how to keep players relatively close together Season after Season, while still allowing them to make progress.

Here’s something I miss from Destiny 1: filling bars on my items and using materials to level items. Even though I ended up with more ascendant and radiant materials than I ever could’ve needed, the existence of these materials meant the hunt for powerful rolls could go on longer. I think wanting and needing materials is a good thing—as long as you know what you can do to go pursue that material. I’m glad we’re getting a little more of that back into Destiny with Shadowkeep.

Need Masterwork Cores? Well, we didn’t have a very good answer for that much of the year. Lesson learned.

Stay tuned to bungie.net for the third installment of Director’s Cut. It focuses on the action part of MMO-action game (think: combat and PvP, with a bonus section on the evolving world) coming to Destiny this Fall.

[marketingcomcaio]

How to Find Your Target Audience

When I first started out in marketing, I thought traffic was everything.

I wanted to be as big as companies like HubSpot. Just look at the image above and you’ll see how many visitors they are getting.

They generate 29.61 million visitors a month from 11.74 million people. And those visitors produce roughly 10 billion dollars of market cap.

Now, let’s look at NeilPatel.com. Can you guess how many visitors I’m getting each month?

I’m generating roughly 8.717 million visitors a month from 3.616 million people.

When you look at it from a unique visitor perspective, HubSpot is getting 3.24 times more unique visitors than me.

So, in theory, I should be worth roughly 3 times less than them, right? Well, technically I’m not even worth 1/10th of them. Not even close.

Why is that? It’s because I didn’t go after the right target audience, while HubSpot did.

And today, I want you to avoid making this massive mistake that I made. Because marketing is tough, so why would you start off by going after the wrong people?

It will just cause you to waste years and tons of money like it did with me.

Defining your target audience is the first and most essential step towards success for any company or business, especially if you are just getting started.

So before we dive into things, let me first break down what you are about to learn in this article:

What is a Target Audience?

The Difference Between Target Audience and Persona

The Importance of Selecting Your Target Audience Correctly

How to Define your Target Audience: 6 Questions to Help You

Creating Customized Content for Your Audience

Let’s get started!

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a share of consumers that companies or businesses direct their marketing actions to drive awareness of their products or services.

I know that is a tongue twister, so let me simplify it a bit more…

The intention here is to target a market with whom you will communicate with. A group of people with the same level of education, goals, interests, problems, etc. that will need the product or service you are selling.

Basically, you want to target people who will buy your stuff.

If you target people who don’t want to buy your stuff, you might get more traffic to your site… but it won’t do much for you. And you’ll be pulling out your hair trying to figure out why none of your visitors are buying from you.

Now before we dive into the details on finding your target audience, let’s first go over “personas” because many people confuse them with a target audience and if you do, you’ll just end up wasting time.

The difference between a target audience and a persona

You already know the definition, so I won’t bore you with that again.

The most commonly used data to define the target audience of a company are:

Age

Gender

Education background

Purchasing power

Social class

Location

Consumption habits

Examples of a target audience: Women, 20-30 years old, living in Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree, monthly income of $4,000 – $6,000, and passionate about fashion and decor.

If you start a company without knowing your exact target audience, you could end up like me instead of HubSpot… we wouldn’t want that now. 😉

And here is another example. Let’s say you have a business that sells educational toys. So your target audience might be children, mothers, education specialists, or teachers.

Or you have a motorcycle business. Your audience will definitely not be people younger than 18, right?

There is no point in trying to reach everyone in order to increase your chances of sales and profit. It will actually cost you more and decrease your profit margins in the long run.

Now let’s go over “personas”…

Persona

In marketing, personas are profiles of buyers that would be your ideal customers.

Personas are fictional characters with characteristics of your real customers. They’re developed based on target audience research and may help you direct your marketing actions better.

A persona is a person that may be interested in what you have to offer since they’re very connected to your brand and you must make an effort to make them a client and retain them.

A persona involves much deeper and more detailed research than the target audience since it includes:

Personal characteristics

Purchasing power

Lifestyle

Interests

Engagement in social networks

Professional information

Persona example: Mariana, 22, blogger. Lives in Miami, Florida. Has a journalism degree. Has a blog and posts makeup tutorials and tips about fashion and decor. She always follows fashion events in the area and participates in meetings with other people in the fashion niche. As a digital influencer, she cares a lot about what people see on her social network profiles. Likes to practice indoor activities and go to the gym in her free time.

If I had to define the main difference between persona and target audience, I’d say that the target audience considers the whole, in a more general way, while the persona has a more specific form.

And if you want help creating personas for business, check out this article about creating the perfect persona. But for now, let’s focus on finding your right target audience.

The importance of choosing your target audience correctly

The big mistake I made was that I didn’t figure out my target audience when I first started. I just created content and started marketing to anyone who wanted traffic.

But that is a bit too vague because not everyone wants more traffic is a good fit for my ad agency.

They could just want to be famous on Instagram or YouTube, which is a lot of people, but that doesn’t help me generate more income.

Funny enough, there are more people who are interested in getting Instagram followers than people who want to learn about SEO.

But once you know your target audience, it’s easier to find and perform keyword research. For example, I know that I shouldn’t waste too much time writing articles about Instagram or Twitch even though the search volume is high.

It will just cause me to get irrelevant traffic and waste my time/money.

And that’s the key… especially when it comes to things like SEO or paid ads. The moment you know your target audience, you can perform keyword research correctly and find opportunities that don’t just drive traffic, but more importantly, drive revenue.

Now let’s figure out your target audience.

How to define your target audience: 6 questions to help you

Figuring out your target audience isn’t rocket science. It just comes down to a few simple questions.

6 actually, to be exact.

Go through each of the questions below and you’ll know the exact audience you are targeting.

1. Who are they?

When thinking about who might be your target audience, you must consider who are the people who identify with your brand.

One way to find out is to monitor who follows, likes, shares, and comments on your posts on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

If someone is willing to engage with you, then chances are they are your target.

But in many cases, your ideal audience may not always be on the social web. They might be inactive on social media but buy from your company frequently or sign up for your services.

Even those who bought from you only once must be considered a part of your target audience, as someone who bought once might buy again.

There is no point in making a great effort to sell if you don’t make a similar effort to keep the customers you have already gained.

Customers like to feel special, and that is why the post-sales process is so important. Your relationship with the customer must remain even after the purchase is completed.

2. What are their greatest difficulties, problems, or desires?

What is cool, interesting, and good for you might not be for the customer.

You can’t think only of yourself when it’s time to define the difficulties, problems, and desires of your target audience. You must put yourself in their shoes.

Don’t make offers based on what you think. Make them according to research grounded in data, previous experiences, and analysis of your potential customers’ behavior.

Understand the greatest difficulties your audience faces to try to help solve them.

3. Where do they find the information they need daily?

Everyone needs information.

Every day you are surrounded by tons of information on the channels that you follow, but when you need it the most, where do you go to find that information?

Identify the communication channels most appropriate to your target audience and try to talk to them using a specific language from their universe.

For example, I know my target audience will either read marketing blogs or spend a lot of time on social sites like YouTube and LinkedIn consuming information.

4. What is the benefit of your product?

Everyone wants solutions for their problems and to make their lives easier. This is a collective desire and it’s no different for your target audience.

Think a little about your product and the problem of your target audience. What benefits does your product or service offer? What can it do to solve those problems? What is the main value offer?

With so much competition, you must try to find your competitive advantage in your niche and always try to improve your product, offering something extra that others do not.

5. What draws their attention negatively?

Being optimistic helps a lot, but thinking about the negatives can also help, especially when we talk about target audiences.

Better than considering what your audience wants, you can consider what it definitely doesn’t want, what it considers negative, and what it avoids.

With this powerful information in hand, you may have more chances to captivate your potential customers.

Avoiding what they consider negative is the first step to gain their approval. After that, you only need to apply other strategies to do efficient marketing.

6. Who do they trust?

Trust is everything to your target audience. No one purchases a product or service from a company they don’t know or trust.

This is why reviews on Amazon are read and so important for sellers. They know it builds trust… it’s also helped Amazon become a trillion-dollar company.

Even though this is the last question to define target audiences, it is one of the most important ones.

This is why the reputation of your company is so important. Taking care of the relationship with your customers is essential as they will spread information about your brand on the internet and to their friends and family.

If you get good reviews, have positive comments, and garner a great reputation, this will be the base for potential customers to feel motivated to buy from you.

Creating customized content for your audience

Now that you know your audience, let’s get to the fun stuff. Let’s create content for them.

Everyone creates content, right? Just look at Google if you don’t believe me.

You just have to put a keyword on Google and you will see thousands if not millions of results for each keyword.

When you research “best earbuds” on Google, this is what you see:

First, there are options of products from Google Shopping, with ads and prices for different earphones for various audiences, needs, and tastes.

Next, there is a list of sites and blogs with information about different types of earphones and comparisons:

There is no shortage of content about this subject or any other that you can search for. Anyone can create and publish text with no barriers.

The question is how you can make this content more personalized and attractive for your consumer.

Everyone produces content. Millions of publications are posted every day.

The secret though is to create content that targets your ideal customer and no one else. Generic content may produce more traffic, but it will also produce fewer sales.

To find what your target audience is searching for, you can use Ubersuggest. Just type in a keyword related to your audience.

From there, on the left-hand navigation, click on “keyword ideas.” You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like the one below.

You now have topics to choose from. Not all of them will be a good fit but some will.

I recommend that you go after the long-tail terms, such as “best earbuds for running” (assuming your target audience is active). The more generic terms like “best earbuds” will drive traffic and a few sales, but it won’t convert as well as more specific terms.

The same goes if you are doing keyword research for the service industry or even the B2B space.

Types of content to create

Once you have a list of keywords you want to target, you might be confused as to what type of content you should be creating.

You’ll want to create content based on your funnel. In essence, you want to cover each step of the funnel.

The top of the funnel involves content created for visitors and leads, that is, people that might access your site, blog, or social networks by chance.

When thinking about the top of the funnel, the idea is to create materials with more general subjects, with clear and easily accessible language.

It could be educational content, including clarifications or curiosities about your product or service or something somehow related to your industry.

The middle of the funnel is when the conversions happen. In other words, in this stage, the person who has a problem and the intention to solve it considers the purchase of your product or service.

It’s the middle of the road, but it is not the sale itself, because it’s still only about ideas. It’s in the middle of the funnel that you get closer to your target audience and generate more identification.

Next: bottom of the funnel content. This content focuses more on your product or service.

Here you can introduce details about functions, benefits, and other direct information about your product or service.

It is far more likely to convert here as this particular audience has practically decided to buy already and you are only going to give them a final push.

Conclusion

I’m hoping this article saves you from making the big mistake I made.

But knowing your target audience isn’t enough, though. It doesn’t guarantee success. You still need to create and market your content. That’s why I covered keyword research in this article as well.

Once you create content, you may also want to check out these guides as they will help you attract the right people to your site:

17 content marketing strategies to improve engagement

Social media: how to make the most of your investment

Customer prospecting: learn to prospect customers and sell more

Optimize your site so you can rank #1 on Google

So have you figured out your target audience yet?

The post How to Find Your Target Audience appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Find Your Target Audience Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

[remelitalia]

How to Find Your Target Audience

When I first started out in marketing, I thought traffic was everything.

I wanted to be as big as companies like HubSpot. Just look at the image above and you’ll see how many visitors they are getting.

They generate 29.61 million visitors a month from 11.74 million people. And those visitors produce roughly 10 billion dollars of market cap.

Now, let’s look at NeilPatel.com. Can you guess how many visitors I’m getting each month?

I’m generating roughly 8.717 million visitors a month from 3.616 million people.

When you look at it from a unique visitor perspective, HubSpot is getting 3.24 times more unique visitors than me.

So, in theory, I should be worth roughly 3 times less than them, right? Well, technically I’m not even worth 1/10th of them. Not even close.

Why is that? It’s because I didn’t go after the right target audience, while HubSpot did.

And today, I want you to avoid making this massive mistake that I made. Because marketing is tough, so why would you start off by going after the wrong people?

It will just cause you to waste years and tons of money like it did with me.

Defining your target audience is the first and most essential step towards success for any company or business, especially if you are just getting started.

So before we dive into things, let me first break down what you are about to learn in this article:

What is a Target Audience?

The Difference Between Target Audience and Persona

The Importance of Selecting Your Target Audience Correctly

How to Define your Target Audience: 6 Questions to Help You

Creating Customized Content for Your Audience

Let’s get started!

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a share of consumers that companies or businesses direct their marketing actions to drive awareness of their products or services.

I know that is a tongue twister, so let me simplify it a bit more…

The intention here is to target a market with whom you will communicate with. A group of people with the same level of education, goals, interests, problems, etc. that will need the product or service you are selling.

Basically, you want to target people who will buy your stuff.

If you target people who don’t want to buy your stuff, you might get more traffic to your site… but it won’t do much for you. And you’ll be pulling out your hair trying to figure out why none of your visitors are buying from you.

Now before we dive into the details on finding your target audience, let’s first go over “personas” because many people confuse them with a target audience and if you do, you’ll just end up wasting time.

The difference between a target audience and a persona

You already know the definition, so I won’t bore you with that again.

The most commonly used data to define the target audience of a company are:

Age

Gender

Education background

Purchasing power

Social class

Location

Consumption habits

Examples of a target audience: Women, 20-30 years old, living in Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree, monthly income of $4,000 – $6,000, and passionate about fashion and decor.

If you start a company without knowing your exact target audience, you could end up like me instead of HubSpot… we wouldn’t want that now. ?

And here is another example. Let’s say you have a business that sells educational toys. So your target audience might be children, mothers, education specialists, or teachers.

Or you have a motorcycle business. Your audience will definitely not be people younger than 18, right?

There is no point in trying to reach everyone in order to increase your chances of sales and profit. It will actually cost you more and decrease your profit margins in the long run.

Now let’s go over “personas”…

Persona

In marketing, personas are profiles of buyers that would be your ideal customers.

Personas are fictional characters with characteristics of your real customers. They’re developed based on target audience research and may help you direct your marketing actions better.

A persona is a person that may be interested in what you have to offer since they’re very connected to your brand and you must make an effort to make them a client and retain them.

A persona involves much deeper and more detailed research than the target audience since it includes:

Personal characteristics

Purchasing power

Lifestyle

Interests

Engagement in social networks

Professional information

Persona example: Mariana, 22, blogger. Lives in Miami, Florida. Has a journalism degree. Has a blog and posts makeup tutorials and tips about fashion and decor. She always follows fashion events in the area and participates in meetings with other people in the fashion niche. As a digital influencer, she cares a lot about what people see on her social network profiles. Likes to practice indoor activities and go to the gym in her free time.

If I had to define the main difference between persona and target audience, I’d say that the target audience considers the whole, in a more general way, while the persona has a more specific form.

And if you want help creating personas for business, check out this article about creating the perfect persona. But for now, let’s focus on finding your right target audience.

The importance of choosing your target audience correctly

The big mistake I made was that I didn’t figure out my target audience when I first started. I just created content and started marketing to anyone who wanted traffic.

But that is a bit too vague because not everyone wants more traffic is a good fit for my ad agency.

They could just want to be famous on Instagram or YouTube, which is a lot of people, but that doesn’t help me generate more income.

Funny enough, there are more people who are interested in getting Instagram followers than people who want to learn about SEO.

But once you know your target audience, it’s easier to find and perform keyword research. For example, I know that I shouldn’t waste too much time writing articles about Instagram or Twitch even though the search volume is high.

It will just cause me to get irrelevant traffic and waste my time/money.

And that’s the key… especially when it comes to things like SEO or paid ads. The moment you know your target audience, you can perform keyword research correctly and find opportunities that don’t just drive traffic, but more importantly, drive revenue.

Now let’s figure out your target audience.

How to define your target audience: 6 questions to help you

Figuring out your target audience isn’t rocket science. It just comes down to a few simple questions.

6 actually, to be exact.

Go through each of the questions below and you’ll know the exact audience you are targeting.

1. Who are they?

When thinking about who might be your target audience, you must consider who are the people who identify with your brand.

One way to find out is to monitor who follows, likes, shares, and comments on your posts on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

If someone is willing to engage with you, then chances are they are your target.

But in many cases, your ideal audience may not always be on the social web. They might be inactive on social media but buy from your company frequently or sign up for your services.

Even those who bought from you only once must be considered a part of your target audience, as someone who bought once might buy again.

There is no point in making a great effort to sell if you don’t make a similar effort to keep the customers you have already gained.

Customers like to feel special, and that is why the post-sales process is so important. Your relationship with the customer must remain even after the purchase is completed.

2. What are their greatest difficulties, problems, or desires?

What is cool, interesting, and good for you might not be for the customer.

You can’t think only of yourself when it’s time to define the difficulties, problems, and desires of your target audience. You must put yourself in their shoes.

Don’t make offers based on what you think. Make them according to research grounded in data, previous experiences, and analysis of your potential customers’ behavior.

Understand the greatest difficulties your audience faces to try to help solve them.

3. Where do they find the information they need daily?

Everyone needs information.

Every day you are surrounded by tons of information on the channels that you follow, but when you need it the most, where do you go to find that information?

Identify the communication channels most appropriate to your target audience and try to talk to them using a specific language from their universe.

For example, I know my target audience will either read marketing blogs or spend a lot of time on social sites like YouTube and LinkedIn consuming information.

4. What is the benefit of your product?

Everyone wants solutions for their problems and to make their lives easier. This is a collective desire and it’s no different for your target audience.

Think a little about your product and the problem of your target audience. What benefits does your product or service offer? What can it do to solve those problems? What is the main value offer?

With so much competition, you must try to find your competitive advantage in your niche and always try to improve your product, offering something extra that others do not.

5. What draws their attention negatively?

Being optimistic helps a lot, but thinking about the negatives can also help, especially when we talk about target audiences.

Better than considering what your audience wants, you can consider what it definitely doesn’t want, what it considers negative, and what it avoids.

With this powerful information in hand, you may have more chances to captivate your potential customers.

Avoiding what they consider negative is the first step to gain their approval. After that, you only need to apply other strategies to do efficient marketing.

6. Who do they trust?

Trust is everything to your target audience. No one purchases a product or service from a company they don’t know or trust.

This is why reviews on Amazon are read and so important for sellers. They know it builds trust… it’s also helped Amazon become a trillion-dollar company.

Even though this is the last question to define target audiences, it is one of the most important ones.

This is why the reputation of your company is so important. Taking care of the relationship with your customers is essential as they will spread information about your brand on the internet and to their friends and family.

If you get good reviews, have positive comments, and garner a great reputation, this will be the base for potential customers to feel motivated to buy from you.

Creating customized content for your audience

Now that you know your audience, let’s get to the fun stuff. Let’s create content for them.

Everyone creates content, right? Just look at Google if you don’t believe me.

You just have to put a keyword on Google and you will see thousands if not millions of results for each keyword.

When you research “best earbuds” on Google, this is what you see:

First, there are options of products from Google Shopping, with ads and prices for different earphones for various audiences, needs, and tastes.

Next, there is a list of sites and blogs with information about different types of earphones and comparisons:

There is no shortage of content about this subject or any other that you can search for. Anyone can create and publish text with no barriers.

The question is how you can make this content more personalized and attractive for your consumer.

Everyone produces content. Millions of publications are posted every day.

The secret though is to create content that targets your ideal customer and no one else. Generic content may produce more traffic, but it will also produce fewer sales.

To find what your target audience is searching for, you can use Ubersuggest. Just type in a keyword related to your audience.

From there, on the left-hand navigation, click on “keyword ideas.” You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like the one below.

You now have topics to choose from. Not all of them will be a good fit but some will.

I recommend that you go after the long-tail terms, such as “best earbuds for running” (assuming your target audience is active). The more generic terms like “best earbuds” will drive traffic and a few sales, but it won’t convert as well as more specific terms.

The same goes if you are doing keyword research for the service industry or even the B2B space.

Types of content to create

Once you have a list of keywords you want to target, you might be confused as to what type of content you should be creating.

You’ll want to create content based on your funnel. In essence, you want to cover each step of the funnel.

The top of the funnel involves content created for visitors and leads, that is, people that might access your site, blog, or social networks by chance.

When thinking about the top of the funnel, the idea is to create materials with more general subjects, with clear and easily accessible language.

It could be educational content, including clarifications or curiosities about your product or service or something somehow related to your industry.

The middle of the funnel is when the conversions happen. In other words, in this stage, the person who has a problem and the intention to solve it considers the purchase of your product or service.

It’s the middle of the road, but it is not the sale itself, because it’s still only about ideas. It’s in the middle of the funnel that you get closer to your target audience and generate more identification.

Next: bottom of the funnel content. This content focuses more on your product or service.

Here you can introduce details about functions, benefits, and other direct information about your product or service.

It is far more likely to convert here as this particular audience has practically decided to buy already and you are only going to give them a final push.

Conclusion

I’m hoping this article saves you from making the big mistake I made.

But knowing your target audience isn’t enough, though. It doesn’t guarantee success. You still need to create and market your content. That’s why I covered keyword research in this article as well.

Once you create content, you may also want to check out these guides as they will help you attract the right people to your site:

17 content marketing strategies to improve engagement

Social media: how to make the most of your investment

Customer prospecting: learn to prospect customers and sell more

Optimize your site so you can rank #1 on Google

So have you figured out your target audience yet?

The post How to Find Your Target Audience appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/target-audience/ via https://neilpatel.com

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[dunkmasterkyouko]

The Role of The Player Protagonist: What Fallout 4 Got Right and What it Got Wrong

Some reflections on the good and bad parts of the “player character” experience of Fallout 4.

There are many ways to approach to the main character of an interactive narrative. Not all game narratives are changed by the player’s actions in particularly meaningful ways, but for a large percentage of games, the player is at least advancing the narrative if nothing else. In doing so, often this entails controlling the protagonist of the narrative.

It’s worth noting that I’m couching my statements a lot. Gaming is a diverse medium, and even the definition of what is a game will change from person to person. Obviously, in some genres such as an RTS, you may not embody a particular protagonist. In some narratives, your level of interaction with the story may be essentially non-existent, and you’re merely piecing together a story from outside of it. For this piece I’m referring to a more specific kind of games where you control a single person for the majority of the experience and push forwards a story of some kind where that single person plays a large part in events.

That established, even this has many branches. There is of course, always the option of giving the player limited control of an already defined character. It’s hard to argue that someone like Lara Croft or Tidus is a meaningful reflection of the player, or that they are particularly defined by the player. Another approach is simply to make the main character so generic that they are easy to relate to for huge numbers of people, simply by never exhibiting particularly strong personality traits that would cause a player to go “I’d never do that!”

Games such as Mass Effect push it one step further. Instead giving you preset character, they give you a choice of two obvious general characters, but allowing you to mix and match a little. Shepard has a last name and some general constraints to their backstory, personality, and appearance, but the player is allowed customization to some degree. Players will often refer to “their Shepard”, and there is uniqueness to each person’s Shepard, but the fact of the matter is that there are marked similarities between them that makes them quite recognisable. One important component of that is the shared voice, which we’ll come back to later.

However, many games prefer to take an approach closer to pen and paper RPGs- you are given constraints in the form of what the system can model, and are encouraged to create your own character within that mold. In fact many of these games originate from pen and paper- Fallout itself was originally intended to be based on the GURPS system.

Of course, given the limitations of computing compared to a human game runner, your options are a little more limited than that. There’s only so many dialogue options they can program in. There’s only so many talents, abilities, and solutions to problems that can be accounted for. You are still in many ways picking from a list still, but it’s a collection of interconnecting lists rather than a set of fully independent stand alone options.

Whatever the particular methods, the end result is a game designed around the assumption that the main character could be any number of people who might have any number of dispositions, skills, personalities, and motivations.

The first way that Fallout 4 goes wrong is a point that I’m far from the first one to make. The main story of Fallout 4 is almost completely devoid of diversity in how it plays out character-to-character. That isn’t to say that there are no choices, but that the player’s role in the story and their character as represented by their actions are almost identical. No matter which faction you choose, no matter what choices you make, no matter who your character is or how they behave, in the main story of Fallout 4 the Sole Survivor is a distraught widow or widower who is desperately searching for their son. They are also passive, stupid, and gullible.

Firstly, it is essentially impossible to establish a character unique motivation for your involvement in the main quest. Using an example that I won’t touch on for the last time, in Fallout New Vegas, you could have any number of reasons for engaging with the main quest at first. Petty revenge for being shot. A search for answers about why you were shot. Simply because you encounter events relating to as you travel the wastes, since the enemy placement and geography funnels you towards the main quest locations. Once Benny is dealt with, which can be done a variety of ways for a variety of reasons, your character still isn’t locked into any one driving motivation. Maybe they’re siding with the NCR because they value stability, or maybe they just want to be on the winning side. Or maybe they just hate the legion. Or think that the NCR is most likely to pay well and not backstab them.

Meanwhile, in Fallout 4, there is one and only one reason to engage with the main story: maternal or paternal instinct. You engage with the main story because you want to save your son, and you are forced to assume that Shaun is alive and forced to decide that it’s logical to bumble around asking people if they’ve seen “a baby”.

This also touches on what I said about the main character always being passive, stupid, and gullible. It is not ever an option to have the sole survivor consider that the first unfreezing did not happen right before they were unfrozen for good. You can occasionally pick a token dialogue option about “maybe Shaun wouldn’t be a baby”, but the Sole Survivor will always behave and speak with the underlying assumption that Shaun is a baby until the child Shaun concept is introduced, at which point they will always act with the assumption that Shaun is about ten. The second I left the vault in Fallout 4, knowing nothing about the plot, I immediately realized that I had absolutely zero idea how old Shaun would be. It could have been a hundred years ago and Shaun was already dead. There was absolutely no way to communicate this as the Sole Survivor. You have to make stupid assumptions because the plot is written that way. Deal with it.

Once you follow the main quest, you are confronted with another problem: you are never allowed to try and solve anything on your own. You go to where people tell you, and follow the leads you are directly handed. You are never given a chance to make any deductions or decisions. You simply go to the next person who might solve things for you randomly. Once again, you’re forced to follow the plot thread of this one mercenary you have a fairly generic description of being definitely 1) still alive 2) infamous enough that people would know he is and 3) still a link to Shaun rather than “I don’t know, someone hired me to steal vault babies”. You are not ever given any option to search in another other way. You describe Kellogg, and you get the dog to track him.

Meanwhile, going back to Fallout New Vegas, you can track Benny however you want. You can follow the breadcrumb trail, asking about a far more noticeable person who you know did something recently rather than an unknown period of time ago, or you can make the logical deduction of, say, going to where you were delivering the package, or going to the central hub of the world, or learning early on that Benny is from New Vegas and making a beeline to him that way. In the original Fallout, you can follow the trail the game sets up for the water chip, or you can simply walk in a direction and find settlements, search for vaults in the mountains, or ignore the quest entirely and focus on exploration until you feel that you’ve met people that might actually know where the water chip is.

I don’t think it’s necessary or called for to go over the main quest step by step criticizing it. The main points are already evident. There are a few more things to mention, however. Firstly, you are never allowed to not fall for the android Shaun. Secondly, you have absolutely no agency over your response to Shaun. You cannot not believe him that he’s your son. You cannot feel no connection to him given that he grew up completely separate to you and there’s no emotional connection to this old man when you were looking for your baby child. You are always emotional to see him and fully believe first that the android is real, and then that Shaun is actually your son, neither with any real evidence other than your magical ability to know what your child would grow up to look like.

The last point on the main story is to revisit the passivity I mentioned earlier. You are fundamentally incapable of making enemies except by allying with their enemies, are completely unable to explain things to people. You cannot ever tell the railroad that you control the institute and that you don’t need to kill them to free the synths. You cannot ever tell the institute that you won’t kill the railroad, and that you’re in charge so they can sit down and shut up. You can tell the brotherhood that you don’t agree with them, but they will continue to treat you like you do. Your character is only ever capable of picking whose orders they follow, even when they’re supposedly the leader of multiple factions.

But, Fallout 4 is not a game that consists of only a main quest. And that’s where Fallout 4 does some things right.

I, like many others, was worried at the announcement of a voiced protagonist. The skeptics predicted- correctly, as it turned out- that this would mean that dialogue would become much less varied and less options would be available. It also made your character less unique- as I mentioned with Shepard earlier, having someone deliver a line in the exact same tone and inflection with the exact same voice makes them seem more identical to another character than just choosing the same text dialogue option. Two couriers can seem completely different, but any two Sole Survivors of the same gender will speak identically.

Generally, in a game like that, it’s troubling to erode a player’s unique identity. However, there is one instance where the uniqueness of a character’s identity doesn’t need to shine through for your to feel like you’re playing your own character.

And that’s when you’re pretending to be someone else.

One of the main draws of the Fallout series for me, and the Elder Scrolls series to a lesser extent, is the appeal of the Kung Fu style wanderer. Travelling to communities that you’re not a part of, experiencing the local flavour, solving problems and then moving on. It’s a fun fantasy, and allows things to seem more alive than they really are. When you’re living in the same city as someone, and you hear their four lines of dialogue ten thousand times, how flat and unreal they are is obvious. But when you’re just passing through, you only see a slice of them, and don’t see that that slice is all that’s there. Fallout 4 presents a number of quests that allow you to seamlessly slip into a place where you don’t belong and merely enjoy the ride for a little while. The two best examples of this for me are the Silver Shroud questline and the Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution quest.

The Silver Shroud quest is not only a lot of fun, but it’s both a reflection of things players do organically and a chance to define your character’s motivation and approach. People will often dress up as things just for fun in these types of game- putting on the Grognak outfit and hitting people with Grognak’s axe is just something you do, not for any in game reason but just because it’s fun. So letting you dress as the Silver Shroud at having it mean something is great. Additionally, you’re allowed to pick how much you want to get into character. You can just interact with the people in the quest normally, but you’re given the option to do silly impressions of the Shroud’s voice and pretend to be the character completely. It’s a rare moment of doing a quest differently than another player in a way that isn’t “oh, I did the evil option”. And you could have any number of motivations for acting like the silver shroud- maybe you’re doing it because you’re trying to bring the legend to life to scare people, maybe you’re humouring the old man, maybe you just find it fun to pretend. Since you’re playing the role of the shroud, all these motivations are plausible even with the same options, because you’re not acting like yourself.

The Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution is a slightly different take, but it’s a similar thing- when the robot announces that you have been drafted, as a citizen of the US, simply saying “oh yeah, of course, lead the way” has room for all kinds of different motivations. And like I said, it’s genuinely fun to just see where whatever strange person you’ve run into is going with this and take a walking tour of a miniature community.

In the end, I still don’t much like Fallout 4 for a variety of reasons. But for all the issues the plot has with giving the player the chance to actually play things out the way they want to, those two side quests are genuinely fond memories that I deeply enjoyed. Sometimes the best way have a quest that any number of different people would do for any number of different reasons is simply to hand someone a costume and whisper “play along”.

[12izzy3]

Webcomic Recommendations No One Asked For:

I......... Spent 2 hours putting together a list of my webcomic recommendations, with summaries and reviews, because I was reworking my blog... And really I don’t think anyone ever goes directly on to my blog proper, so it feels kind of foolish to have that there where no one will see it, so I’m actually going to post it as well:

Webcomics are honestly just so tight, and there’s such a vast variety of them that there’s something for everyone, if not a few somethings for everyone! I’m personally all about indie games, but if there’s another indie market that I feel like the internet has created a space for it’s comics. After I started writing this I realized I have a uh… Lot of recommendations. Also, I may be an idiot for not using the author’s own summaries???

Regularly updating:

KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS - A comic about a college girl, Allison, given mystical powers beyond her understanding, and thrust into a celestial world filled with angels and demons, where the lines of good and evil are blurry at best. With the help of friends she meets along the way, she must navigate her new powers, and save her boyfriend from forces that would destroy existence. Kinda dark thematically (with very rare and minor gore), but a great comic if you love action, fantasy, and fantastic art. One of my favorites.

AWFUL HOSPITAL - Another one of my favorites. After her child becomes terribly sick, and doctors tell her that there’s nothing that they can do, a mother wakes up in a mysterious, otherworldly hospital. She must navigate this confusing and sometimes horrifying hospital to save her child and get home, and on the way, she makes many odd friends and unknowable enemies, and learns that her child’s sickness may be part of something larger. This comic is funny, has cool action, a unique format, and lots of great, though ghastly, character designs.

GUNNERKRIGG COURT - A coming of age story about two girls, Antimony and Kat, as they try to find their place in each other’s lives, and the two clashing worlds that surround them, the massive technological complex that is their school and home, Gunnerkrigg Court, and the forest across the river, where magic and fantastic creatures thrive, under the watchful eye of the trickster god Coyote. Another great one for if you like fantasy, but is usually a lot lighter, with a peak of intensity about equal to… Like, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, I think. I’ve only gotten into this one pretty recently, but it’s good.

PARANATURAL - After his family moves to his dad’s old home town, Max discovers that he has magical powers, and becomes part of the Paranatural Activities club at his school, a group of students and their adviser who all have magical powers, and use them to protect the populace from ghosts, as well as investigate the many magical mysteries of the town. This comic is great, and mostly focuses on action and comedy. The art is a very colorful cartoony style, and the characters are drawn very… fluid, rubbery. The best way to put it is that the artist has really put a lot of effort into making characters consistently as expressive as possible, and that good old Disney/Looney Toons/Tom & Jerry stretchiness makes for very good visual comedy.

HOUSEPETS! - Another one of the earliest webcomics I ever read! Housepets is… largely a comedy comic, following the lives of anthropomorphized pets in a small neighborhood. They go on adventures, and live the fun yet complicated lives of an open society of people with unbelievable amounts of free time. However, sometimes there are bigger drama/adventure arcs, which are really good! A lot of the times amazing art or cool action are what draw me into adventure stories, but I just think the plot of this comic can be really good and surprisingly deep for a humor comic. And it’s still loose enough, and in the newspaper comic style that you can usually jump in very often (not every strip, mind you but in pretty small arcs) without feeling like you’ve missed a ton. Long too, lots to read, recommend.

STAND STILL STAY SILENT - SSSS is a comic that takes place 90 years after the end of the world. A zombie-like virus with strong mystical qualities has wiped out not just human, but much of the world’s mammalian life. In Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, and Denmark), in spite of the virus, society continues to exist, and most people live normal, happy lives. Our comic follows a research team, formed on a hairstring budget to travel into the infected zone, collect information on the virus and state of the fauna there, and, secretly, to collect books to sell back home. A great fantasy adventure drama that updates very often, and has really good art.

CUCUMBER QUEST - In spite of order this is actually the last one I’m writing, and I’m tired, so I’m going to copy the book one summary from Amazon:

What happens when an evil queen gets her hands on an ancient force of destruction? World domination, obviously. The seven kingdoms of Dreamside need a legendary hero. Instead, they’ll have to settle for Cucumber, a nerdy magician who just wants to go to school. As destiny would have it, he and his way more heroic sister, Almond, must now seek the Dream Sword, the only weapon powerful enough to defeat Queen Cordelia’s Nightmare Knight. Can these bunny siblings really save the world in its darkest hour? Sure, why not?

Cucumber Quest is good, the art is colorful and bright, all of the characters are relatable and real, including the villains, there’s cool adventures sequences and plot, and it’s a very fun comic. There’s humor and love and struggle in the comic, and it’s very well done.

GIRL GENIUS - Girl Genius follows Agatha Heterodyne, up and coming mad scientist, on her many adventures to save herself, her friends and the world if it’s along the way. It’s hard, however, competing with an entire world of mad scientists, as well as the Heterodyne legacy, one filled with chaos and bloodshed up until recently. I like Girl Genius a lot. It doesn’t move through the story very fast, but there’s a lot of solid world building, and more importantly, very intriguing sci-fi action and adventure happening inside of that world! I’m also pretty sure they do a radio show or podcast or something with additional Agatha adventures on top of the comic.

SUPERNORMAL STEP - After leading a life as a drifter after the death of her father, Fae is pulled into an alternate world where magic is real. There, she tries to find her place in life, master the magic that the world around her runs on, and get home to plain old earth in one piece. Lots of cool action, every character has really got their own style of magic. I can honestly tell you that it’s good, but I read it over such a long period of time that it’s got a pretty vague impression in my head.

ATOMIC ROBO - Robo is a skilled an dedicated scientist. He’s also an atomic robot built and raised by Nikola Tesla. Atomic Robo follows the titular character on the many adventures of his life, from WWII to the present. As the head of Tesladyne Industries, Robo is dedicated to researching the outlandish, the weird, the impossible! And when the world calls on him, he and his Action Scientists defend it from giant monsters, cosmic anomalies, and mad science. Atomic Robo is great if you love action, robots, monsters, humor, and velociraptors duel-wielding uzis. Highly recommended.

DUMBING OF AGE - As the title would imply, Dumbing Of Age is a pretty standard coming of age comedy! Starring a wide cast of likable and complex character, DoA follows a group of college freshmen as they learn more about themselves, and grow beyond the bubbles that they were raised in. I think the underpinnings of the comic are pretty strongly on humor, but there’s a lot of drama, and conversations about meaningful things too. There are lots of varying depictions of drama, depression, anxiety, and the ways people deal with pressure, and fear. But there’s also a lot of love and friendliness. It’s a good comic, and probably the only solid slice-of-life on my list.

MANLY GUYS DOING MANLY THINGS - This comic follows The Commander, a bio-engineered super soldier sent back in time to run a temp agency. This particular temp agency specializes in reintroducing particularly brutish video game, comic, and movie protagonists back into normal polite society. Duke Nukem isn’t much of a man for customer service, however. Later on the comic drifts more toward Commander’s personal life. (So slice of life, but with a buff, and actually surprisingly sensitive and forward thinking, super commando from the future.) Has been in a bit of a slump in terms of updates recently, but they still happen.

GRRL POWER - Sidney, a slightly hyper nerd who works at a comic shop, stumbles upon an artifact that gives her a variety of superpowers. After being exposed, she becomes a member of the government’s brand new super hero organization. This comic is a lot of fun, with some cool superpowers and super fights. Lots of humor, very consistently, in any given scene. Sadly, it is a bit fan service-y, though in the grand scale of things it’s not the worst offender (though definitely the worst you’ll see on this list).

SWORD INTERVAL - This is a pretty new one for me, but it’s great. At some indeterminate point in the past (potentially as far back as the civil war, if not farther), the earth became exposed to monsters and magic in ways that it wasn’t before. Humanity still exists and survives, but plagued by supernatural forces. Our main character is Fall, a very new monster hunter, who after years in witness protection, has decided to track down and kill the Hierophant, the powerful monster that killed her parents. Sword interval does a lot of really cool fantasy stuff, with new takes on classic monsters, and magic and monsters in settings that we don’t often see them in, out in the open in present day. It’s something I wish we could see more. Good action and art, particularly character design.

BACK - Abigail is back. From the dead? From a very long sleep in a box underground? She doesn’t know either. She doesn’t know a lot of things. What she does know is that she’s got two guns, is nearly indestructible, and is prophesied to go north to the capital and end the world. With the help of the young cleric Michael, who supplements her absolute lack of all knowledge and common sense, Abigail fights her way through the kingdom, and past the kings many superpowered deputies. Back is cool, back is funny, and sometimes has some good action. I wouldn’t consider it one of my favorites, but it’s a comic I started and I’ve kept up with, so that’s saying something.

MARE INTERNUM - Not very long yet, and I only recently read it, but Mare Internum is really good. I don’t want to spoil it too much, honestly, especially because it’s so short, but it’s a sci-fi adventure comic about being trapped, underground, on Mars, and finding life there. The art is great, the story so far is well written, and the dialogue is good. I really don’t want to spoil it, but there are some great concepts in it and you should read it.

OPHIUCHUS - A very new comic about an ancient stone guardian who is whisked away to another, far off world. Here, he is employed to help two of this world’s denizens defeat the blight that has corrupted and destroyed their once almost utopian world. The art for this is really good. The comic is not currently long enough to comment on much else, but it seems interesting, sci-fi with a touch of fantasy.

Slowly Updating:

AVA’S DEMON - Ava’s Demon is about a girl, Ava who has spent her entire young life haunted by a ghost that torments her, before finally making a deal. The ghost, Wrathia, will help her become a normal girl, with friends and a normal life, but first, Ava must track down the ghosts of Wrathia’s most powerful allies, and help her dissolve the massive interplanetary empire that is TITAN. Ava’s Demon is amazing. The story is good, but I think the comic’s greatest strength is absolutely stunning and polished art. Strong recommendation.

THE PROPERTY OF HATE - RGB is a self-described monster, a sharp dressed man with a TV for a head. However, he’s looking for a hero to guide on a quest. RGB whisks our young protagonist, the Hero, to a world that exists beside our own a world completely fueled and inhabited by our creativity, our stories. RGB protects the Hero from these dangers, guiding her on a mission unknown, through a world that, although mystical, seems to have lost its hope.

HE IS A GOOD BOY - Slow but large updates. This comic follows the life a sentient acorn, Crange, after the death of his parent (a tree) to a lumberjack. Crange is kind of a bit of a loser, and stumbles around his world of sentient rocks and bugs getting into all sorts of trouble and hijinks. These hijinks almost always result in someone’s death, which Crange is impressively unphased by. HIAGB is fantastic, in my opinion. The art is great, the humor is great, especially the visual comedy, and the story is good. However, it gets real dark, and gory. But if you’re fine with that, it IS a (dark) comedy comic, and a good one.

THE LAST HALLOWEEN - One Halloween, the darkness opens up, and monsters pour out from the seams between our world and theirs. Approximately 7 billion monsters, in fact. Mona, a young girl and horror fanatic finds herself thrown into a world of chaos and horror, on the run from her own monster, and forced to look for a way to save the world, with the help of ghosts, zombies, vampires, and even monsters themselves. In spite of the fact that this comic can be VERY dark, I think one of its big hooks is humor and likable characters, on top of great art and plot. I really like it. This comic maybeshouldn’t be on the slow update list, but the artist is just picking up speed after a long hiatus, so…

ROMANTICALLY APOCALYPTIC - The apocalypse happened, and Charles Snippy missed it. Humanity was wiped out in a war against it’s own, ever-present AI, and Charles Snippy, a scientist/tour guide without the implants made it out alive, only to wander alone this is until he meets Zee Captain, an ever positive, gender question mark, maniac who wanders the wasteland with their insane assistant Pilot. Snippy, Captain and Pilot wander the wasteland, facing off against monsters, raiders, and the laws of physics in a mind warping and illogical adventure.

On Hiatus:

DERELICT - Like a surprisingly large number of comics on this list, in Derelict, the world has ended. A strange Miasma travels the world, killing billions, and bringing with it gargoyle-like monsters who fear the daylight. However, the world goes on, in a small, broken way, and our story follows a scavenger in this new world.

HELVETICA - So, you die, and then what? Well, life goes on. This is what Helvetica learns, after he dies and reemerges into an afterlife that seems shockingly similar to the world of the living, with work, pressure, responsibility, danger, and just plain old boring life. Except everyone is a skeleton. Helvetica is very resistant to accept this new life in death. This one is pretty short so far, and hasn’t updated in a while, but it’s good.

VIBE - Hasn’t update in a year and a half, but what’s there is good (Honestly, it’s super sad it hasn’t update, I like it a lot). Vibe follows Baron, a young shaman, a spiritual master who is able to expel negative emotions (bad vibes) from the human body. Only those emotions then become monsters, who a shaman must fight to complete the process! With the help of his Loa (they’re like familiars), he navigates life as a teenager, and his increasingly complex and dangerous life as a shaman. I really like this comic. There’s a lot of very cool and dynamic action, and the artist makes great use of a ton of bright colors.

THE ABOMINABLE CHARLES CHRISTOPHER - This one hasn’t updated in about a year, but what’s there right now is good. Charles Christopher is a Sasquatch, living in the woods on the edge of society. Though he himself is fairly soft, and simple, the wilderness around him is full of anthropomorphized animals who go about shockingly human social and professional lives. The comic follows Charles Christopher as he interacts with the world of these animals, and becomes tangled in a vast spiritual quest.

POWER NAP - Hard to know exactly where to put this one. It’s currently VERY slow updating. Power Nap takes place in a world where the majority of mankind is reliant on a drug that allows them to live 24/7 without sleep. However, there are those who are allergic to the medicine, who live their lives out of sync with their peers, protected by the government, but effectively second class citizens. However, in a sleepless world, over-saturated by virtual reality, the human subconscious has found ways to seep into reality.

THE FANCY ADVENTURES OF JACK CANNON - I want to start this out by saying this comic is probably dead, without a 100% resolution. However, it’s currently 492 pages, and a LOT of the storyline covered in that span was resolved. Such that, if they’d wanted to, I could’ve seen the author wrapping it up. I digress. Jack Cannon is about a kid moving to a new school, where he finds the bullies are able to hack reality. Somehow immune to hacks, Jack fights the bullies, and in doing so, puts himself on the stage of a worldwide battle against hackers. Lots of really cool action in this, one of the first few webcomics I read.

Complete:

HOMESTUCK - If you’re here, you are probably at least aware of Homestuck. It’s about a bunch of goofy awkward teen friends who get sucked into a cosmic (video) game, with the fate of the universe at stake, but you know, they’ve still got that teen angst. Time travel is involved. It’s a very long, fun, and dramatic comic which is heavily influenced by RPGs and point and click adventures.

THE ADVENTURES OF DR. MCNINJA - The pressures of being a doctor AND ninja are immense, but on either front, you can trust that Dr. McNinja is the man for the job. Born into an Irish ninja family, Dr. McNinja longs for a life where he can do medicine in peace, but finds himself constantly pulled into a string of action packed adventures, fighting giant monsters, bandits riding velociraptors, and dueling radical interdimensional kings. This one if fairly long, a bit over 1800 pages, but it’s really good and well done. Again, there is a lot of both action and humor (I’m big on that), with some surprisingly meaningful and well-done story arcs in spite of how silly the premise is.

REMIND - This one is about a girl who lives in a lighthouse on the edge of a town whose main draw is the “Lizard Man” legend that her own father made up. However, after her cat one day starts walking on two legs and talking, claiming to be one of many said lizard men, they both go on a journey to discover the truth. This one was OK. The story and sci-fi elements are both alright bot not great. But it’s not super long, so if you have the time, maybe read it.

[reputationiseverything]

How to Find Your Target Audience

email marketing data protection

When I first started out in marketing, I thought traffic was everything.

I wanted to be as big as companies like HubSpot. Just look at the image above and you’ll see how many visitors they are getting.

They generate 29.61 million visitors a month from 11.74 million people. And those visitors produce roughly 10 billion dollars of market cap.

Now, let’s look at NeilPatel.com. Can you guess how many visitors I’m getting each month?

I’m generating roughly 8.717 million visitors a month from 3.616 million people.

When you look at it from a unique visitor perspective, HubSpot is getting 3.24 times more unique visitors than me.

So, in theory, I should be worth roughly 3 times less than them, right? Well, technically I’m not even worth 1/10th of them. Not even close.

Why is that? It’s because I didn’t go after the right target audience, while HubSpot did.

And today, I want you to avoid making this massive mistake that I made. Because marketing is tough, so why would you start off by going after the wrong people?

It will just cause you to waste years and tons of money like it did with me.

Defining your target audience is the first and most essential step towards success for any company or business, especially if you are just getting started.

So before we dive into things, let me first break down what you are about to learn in this article:

What is a Target Audience?

The Difference Between Target Audience and Persona

The Importance of Selecting Your Target Audience Correctly

How to Define your Target Audience: 6 Questions to Help You

Creating Customized Content for Your Audience

Let’s get started!

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a share of consumers that companies or businesses direct their marketing actions to drive awareness of their products or services.

I know that is a tongue twister, so let me simplify it a bit more…

The intention here is to target a market with whom you will communicate with. A group of people with the same level of education, goals, interests, problems, etc. that will need the product or service you are selling.

Basically, you want to target people who will buy your stuff.

If you target people who don’t want to buy your stuff, you might get more traffic to your site… but it won’t do much for you. And you’ll be pulling out your hair trying to figure out why none of your visitors are buying from you.

Now before we dive into the details on finding your target audience, let’s first go over “personas” because many people confuse them with a target audience and if you do, you’ll just end up wasting time.

The difference between a target audience and a persona

You already know the definition, so I won’t bore you with that again.

The most commonly used data to define the target audience of a company are:

Age

Gender

Education background

Purchasing power

Social class

Location

Consumption habits

Examples of a target audience: Women, 20-30 years old, living in Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree, monthly income of $4,000 – $6,000, and passionate about fashion and decor.

If you start a company without knowing your exact target audience, you could end up like me instead of HubSpot… we wouldn’t want that now. 😉

And here is another example. Let’s say you have a business that sells educational toys. So your target audience might be children, mothers, education specialists, or teachers.

Or you have a motorcycle business. Your audience will definitely not be people younger than 18, right?

There is no point in trying to reach everyone in order to increase your chances of sales and profit. It will actually cost you more and decrease your profit margins in the long run.

Now let’s go over “personas”…

Persona

In marketing, personas are profiles of buyers that would be your ideal customers.

Personas are fictional characters with characteristics of your real customers. They’re developed based on target audience research and may help you direct your marketing actions better.

A persona is a person that may be interested in what you have to offer since they’re very connected to your brand and you must make an effort to make them a client and retain them.

A persona involves much deeper and more detailed research than the target audience since it includes:

Personal characteristics

Purchasing power

Lifestyle

Interests

Engagement in social networks

Professional information

Persona example: Mariana, 22, blogger. Lives in Miami, Florida. Has a journalism degree. Has a blog and posts makeup tutorials and tips about fashion and decor. She always follows fashion events in the area and participates in meetings with other people in the fashion niche. As a digital influencer, she cares a lot about what people see on her social network profiles. Likes to practice indoor activities and go to the gym in her free time.

If I had to define the main difference between persona and target audience, I’d say that the target audience considers the whole, in a more general way, while the persona has a more specific form.

And if you want help creating personas for business, check out this article about creating the perfect persona. But for now, let’s focus on finding your right target audience.

The importance of choosing your target audience correctly

The big mistake I made was that I didn’t figure out my target audience when I first started. I just created content and started marketing to anyone who wanted traffic.

But that is a bit too vague because not everyone wants more traffic is a good fit for my ad agency.

They could just want to be famous on Instagram or YouTube, which is a lot of people, but that doesn’t help me generate more income.

Funny enough, there are more people who are interested in getting Instagram followers than people who want to learn about SEO.

But once you know your target audience, it’s easier to find and perform keyword research. For example, I know that I shouldn’t waste too much time writing articles about Instagram or Twitch even though the search volume is high.

It will just cause me to get irrelevant traffic and waste my time/money.

And that’s the key… especially when it comes to things like SEO or paid ads. The moment you know your target audience, you can perform keyword research correctly and find opportunities that don’t just drive traffic, but more importantly, drive revenue.

Now let’s figure out your target audience.

How to define your target audience: 6 questions to help you

Figuring out your target audience isn’t rocket science. It just comes down to a few simple questions.

6 actually, to be exact.

Go through each of the questions below and you’ll know the exact audience you are targeting.

1. Who are they?

When thinking about who might be your target audience, you must consider who are the people who identify with your brand.

One way to find out is to monitor who follows, likes, shares, and comments on your posts on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

If someone is willing to engage with you, then chances are they are your target.

But in many cases, your ideal audience may not always be on the social web. They might be inactive on social media but buy from your company frequently or sign up for your services.

Even those who bought from you only once must be considered a part of your target audience, as someone who bought once might buy again.

There is no point in making a great effort to sell if you don’t make a similar effort to keep the customers you have already gained.

Customers like to feel special, and that is why the post-sales process is so important. Your relationship with the customer must remain even after the purchase is completed.

2. What are their greatest difficulties, problems, or desires?

What is cool, interesting, and good for you might not be for the customer.

You can’t think only of yourself when it’s time to define the difficulties, problems, and desires of your target audience. You must put yourself in their shoes.

Don’t make offers based on what you think. Make them according to research grounded in data, previous experiences, and analysis of your potential customers’ behavior.

Understand the greatest difficulties your audience faces to try to help solve them.

3. Where do they find the information they need daily?

Everyone needs information.

Every day you are surrounded by tons of information on the channels that you follow, but when you need it the most, where do you go to find that information?

Identify the communication channels most appropriate to your target audience and try to talk to them using a specific language from their universe.

For example, I know my target audience will either read marketing blogs or spend a lot of time on social sites like YouTube and LinkedIn consuming information.

4. What is the benefit of your product?

Everyone wants solutions for their problems and to make their lives easier. This is a collective desire and it’s no different for your target audience.

Think a little about your product and the problem of your target audience. What benefits does your product or service offer? What can it do to solve those problems? What is the main value offer?

With so much competition, you must try to find your competitive advantage in your niche and always try to improve your product, offering something extra that others do not.

5. What draws their attention negatively?

Being optimistic helps a lot, but thinking about the negatives can also help, especially when we talk about target audiences.

Better than considering what your audience wants, you can consider what it definitely doesn’t want, what it considers negative, and what it avoids.

With this powerful information in hand, you may have more chances to captivate your potential customers.

Avoiding what they consider negative is the first step to gain their approval. After that, you only need to apply other strategies to do efficient marketing.

6. Who do they trust?

Trust is everything to your target audience. No one purchases a product or service from a company they don’t know or trust.

This is why reviews on Amazon are read and so important for sellers. They know it builds trust… it’s also helped Amazon become a trillion-dollar company.

Even though this is the last question to define target audiences, it is one of the most important ones.

This is why the reputation of your company is so important. Taking care of the relationship with your customers is essential as they will spread information about your brand on the internet and to their friends and family.

If you get good reviews, have positive comments, and garner a great reputation, this will be the base for potential customers to feel motivated to buy from you.

Creating customized content for your audience

Now that you know your audience, let’s get to the fun stuff. Let’s create content for them.

Everyone creates content, right? Just look at Google if you don’t believe me.

You just have to put a keyword on Google and you will see thousands if not millions of results for each keyword.

When you research “best earbuds” on Google, this is what you see:

First, there are options of products from Google Shopping, with ads and prices for different earphones for various audiences, needs, and tastes.

Next, there is a list of sites and blogs with information about different types of earphones and comparisons:

There is no shortage of content about this subject or any other that you can search for. Anyone can create and publish text with no barriers.

The question is how you can make this content more personalized and attractive for your consumer.

Everyone produces content. Millions of publications are posted every day.

The secret though is to create content that targets your ideal customer and no one else. Generic content may produce more traffic, but it will also produce fewer sales.

To find what your target audience is searching for, you can use Ubersuggest. Just type in a keyword related to your audience.

From there, on the left-hand navigation, click on “keyword ideas.” You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like the one below.

You now have topics to choose from. Not all of them will be a good fit but some will.

I recommend that you go after the long-tail terms, such as “best earbuds for running” (assuming your target audience is active). The more generic terms like “best earbuds” will drive traffic and a few sales, but it won’t convert as well as more specific terms.

The same goes if you are doing keyword research for the service industry or even the B2B space.

Types of content to create

Once you have a list of keywords you want to target, you might be confused as to what type of content you should be creating.

You’ll want to create content based on your funnel. In essence, you want to cover each step of the funnel.

The top of the funnel involves content created for visitors and leads, that is, people that might access your site, blog, or social networks by chance.

When thinking about the top of the funnel, the idea is to create materials with more general subjects, with clear and easily accessible language.

It could be educational content, including clarifications or curiosities about your product or service or something somehow related to your industry.

The middle of the funnel is when the conversions happen. In other words, in this stage, the person who has a problem and the intention to solve it considers the purchase of your product or service.

It’s the middle of the road, but it is not the sale itself, because it’s still only about ideas. It’s in the middle of the funnel that you get closer to your target audience and generate more identification.

Next: bottom of the funnel content. This content focuses more on your product or service.

Here you can introduce details about functions, benefits, and other direct information about your product or service.

It is far more likely to convert here as this particular audience has practically decided to buy already and you are only going to give them a final push.

Conclusion

I’m hoping this article saves you from making the big mistake I made.

But knowing your target audience isn’t enough, though. It doesn’t guarantee success. You still need to create and market your content. That’s why I covered keyword research in this article as well.

Once you create content, you may also want to check out these guides as they will help you attract the right people to your site:

17 content marketing strategies to improve engagement

Social media: how to make the most of your investment

Customer prospecting: learn to prospect customers and sell more

Optimize your site so you can rank #1 on Google

So have you figured out your target audience yet?

Google

[reviewandbonuss]

How to Find Your Target Audience

When I first started out in marketing, I thought traffic was everything.

I wanted to be as big as companies like HubSpot. Just look at the image above and you’ll see how many visitors they are getting.

They generate 29.61 million visitors a month from 11.74 million people. And those visitors produce roughly 10 billion dollars of market cap.

Now, let’s look at NeilPatel.com. Can you guess how many visitors I’m getting each month?

I’m generating roughly 8.717 million visitors a month from 3.616 million people.

When you look at it from a unique visitor perspective, HubSpot is getting 3.24 times more unique visitors than me.

So, in theory, I should be worth roughly 3 times less than them, right? Well, technically I’m not even worth 1/10th of them. Not even close.

Why is that? It’s because I didn’t go after the right target audience, while HubSpot did.

And today, I want you to avoid making this massive mistake that I made. Because marketing is tough, so why would you start off by going after the wrong people?

It will just cause you to waste years and tons of money like it did with me.

Defining your target audience is the first and most essential step towards success for any company or business, especially if you are just getting started.

So before we dive into things, let me first break down what you are about to learn in this article:

What is a Target Audience?

The Difference Between Target Audience and Persona

The Importance of Selecting Your Target Audience Correctly

How to Define your Target Audience: 6 Questions to Help You

Creating Customized Content for Your Audience

Let’s get started!

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a share of consumers that companies or businesses direct their marketing actions to drive awareness of their products or services.

I know that is a tongue twister, so let me simplify it a bit more…

The intention here is to target a market with whom you will communicate with. A group of people with the same level of education, goals, interests, problems, etc. that will need the product or service you are selling.

Basically, you want to target people who will buy your stuff.

If you target people who don’t want to buy your stuff, you might get more traffic to your site… but it won’t do much for you. And you’ll be pulling out your hair trying to figure out why none of your visitors are buying from you.

Now before we dive into the details on finding your target audience, let’s first go over “personas” because many people confuse them with a target audience and if you do, you’ll just end up wasting time.

The difference between a target audience and a persona

You already know the definition, so I won’t bore you with that again.

The most commonly used data to define the target audience of a company are:

Age

Gender

Education background

Purchasing power

Social class

Location

Consumption habits

Examples of a target audience: Women, 20-30 years old, living in Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree, monthly income of $4,000 – $6,000, and passionate about fashion and decor.

If you start a company without knowing your exact target audience, you could end up like me instead of HubSpot… we wouldn’t want that now. 😉

And here is another example. Let’s say you have a business that sells educational toys. So your target audience might be children, mothers, education specialists, or teachers.

Or you have a motorcycle business. Your audience will definitely not be people younger than 18, right?

There is no point in trying to reach everyone in order to increase your chances of sales and profit. It will actually cost you more and decrease your profit margins in the long run.

Now let’s go over “personas”…

Persona

In marketing, personas are profiles of buyers that would be your ideal customers.

Personas are fictional characters with characteristics of your real customers. They’re developed based on target audience research and may help you direct your marketing actions better.

A persona is a person that may be interested in what you have to offer since they’re very connected to your brand and you must make an effort to make them a client and retain them.

A persona involves much deeper and more detailed research than the target audience since it includes:

Personal characteristics

Purchasing power

Lifestyle

Interests

Engagement in social networks

Professional information

Persona example: Mariana, 22, blogger. Lives in Miami, Florida. Has a journalism degree. Has a blog and posts makeup tutorials and tips about fashion and decor. She always follows fashion events in the area and participates in meetings with other people in the fashion niche. As a digital influencer, she cares a lot about what people see on her social network profiles. Likes to practice indoor activities and go to the gym in her free time.

If I had to define the main difference between persona and target audience, I’d say that the target audience considers the whole, in a more general way, while the persona has a more specific form.

And if you want help creating personas for business, check out this article about creating the perfect persona. But for now, let’s focus on finding your right target audience.

The importance of choosing your target audience correctly

The big mistake I made was that I didn’t figure out my target audience when I first started. I just created content and started marketing to anyone who wanted traffic.

But that is a bit too vague because not everyone wants more traffic is a good fit for my ad agency.

They could just want to be famous on Instagram or YouTube, which is a lot of people, but that doesn’t help me generate more income.

Funny enough, there are more people who are interested in getting Instagram followers than people who want to learn about SEO.

But once you know your target audience, it’s easier to find and perform keyword research. For example, I know that I shouldn’t waste too much time writing articles about Instagram or Twitch even though the search volume is high.

It will just cause me to get irrelevant traffic and waste my time/money.

And that’s the key… especially when it comes to things like SEO or paid ads. The moment you know your target audience, you can perform keyword research correctly and find opportunities that don’t just drive traffic, but more importantly, drive revenue.

Now let’s figure out your target audience.

How to define your target audience: 6 questions to help you

Figuring out your target audience isn’t rocket science. It just comes down to a few simple questions.

6 actually, to be exact.

Go through each of the questions below and you’ll know the exact audience you are targeting.

1. Who are they?

When thinking about who might be your target audience, you must consider who are the people who identify with your brand.

One way to find out is to monitor who follows, likes, shares, and comments on your posts on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

If someone is willing to engage with you, then chances are they are your target.

But in many cases, your ideal audience may not always be on the social web. They might be inactive on social media but buy from your company frequently or sign up for your services.

Even those who bought from you only once must be considered a part of your target audience, as someone who bought once might buy again.

There is no point in making a great effort to sell if you don’t make a similar effort to keep the customers you have already gained.

Customers like to feel special, and that is why the post-sales process is so important. Your relationship with the customer must remain even after the purchase is completed.

2. What are their greatest difficulties, problems, or desires?

What is cool, interesting, and good for you might not be for the customer.

You can’t think only of yourself when it’s time to define the difficulties, problems, and desires of your target audience. You must put yourself in their shoes.

Don’t make offers based on what you think. Make them according to research grounded in data, previous experiences, and analysis of your potential customers’ behavior.

Understand the greatest difficulties your audience faces to try to help solve them.

3. Where do they find the information they need daily?

Everyone needs information.

Every day you are surrounded by tons of information on the channels that you follow, but when you need it the most, where do you go to find that information?

Identify the communication channels most appropriate to your target audience and try to talk to them using a specific language from their universe.

For example, I know my target audience will either read marketing blogs or spend a lot of time on social sites like YouTube and LinkedIn consuming information.

4. What is the benefit of your product?

Everyone wants solutions for their problems and to make their lives easier. This is a collective desire and it’s no different for your target audience.

Think a little about your product and the problem of your target audience. What benefits does your product or service offer? What can it do to solve those problems? What is the main value offer?

With so much competition, you must try to find your competitive advantage in your niche and always try to improve your product, offering something extra that others do not.

5. What draws their attention negatively?

Being optimistic helps a lot, but thinking about the negatives can also help, especially when we talk about target audiences.

Better than considering what your audience wants, you can consider what it definitely doesn’t want, what it considers negative, and what it avoids.

With this powerful information in hand, you may have more chances to captivate your potential customers.

Avoiding what they consider negative is the first step to gain their approval. After that, you only need to apply other strategies to do efficient marketing.

6. Who do they trust?

Trust is everything to your target audience. No one purchases a product or service from a company they don’t know or trust.

This is why reviews on Amazon are read and so important for sellers. They know it builds trust… it’s also helped Amazon become a trillion-dollar company.

Even though this is the last question to define target audiences, it is one of the most important ones.

This is why the reputation of your company is so important. Taking care of the relationship with your customers is essential as they will spread information about your brand on the internet and to their friends and family.

If you get good reviews, have positive comments, and garner a great reputation, this will be the base for potential customers to feel motivated to buy from you.

Creating customized content for your audience

Now that you know your audience, let’s get to the fun stuff. Let’s create content for them.

Everyone creates content, right? Just look at Google if you don’t believe me.

You just have to put a keyword on Google and you will see thousands if not millions of results for each keyword.

When you research “best earbuds” on Google, this is what you see:

First, there are options of products from Google Shopping, with ads and prices for different earphones for various audiences, needs, and tastes.

Next, there is a list of sites and blogs with information about different types of earphones and comparisons:

There is no shortage of content about this subject or any other that you can search for. Anyone can create and publish text with no barriers.

The question is how you can make this content more personalized and attractive for your consumer.

Everyone produces content. Millions of publications are posted every day.

The secret though is to create content that targets your ideal customer and no one else. Generic content may produce more traffic, but it will also produce fewer sales.

To find what your target audience is searching for, you can use Ubersuggest. Just type in a keyword related to your audience.

From there, on the left-hand navigation, click on “keyword ideas.” You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like the one below.

You now have topics to choose from. Not all of them will be a good fit but some will.

I recommend that you go after the long-tail terms, such as “best earbuds for running” (assuming your target audience is active). The more generic terms like “best earbuds” will drive traffic and a few sales, but it won’t convert as well as more specific terms.

The same goes if you are doing keyword research for the service industry or even the B2B space.

Types of content to create

Once you have a list of keywords you want to target, you might be confused as to what type of content you should be creating.

You’ll want to create content based on your funnel. In essence, you want to cover each step of the funnel.

The top of the funnel involves content created for visitors and leads, that is, people that might access your site, blog, or social networks by chance.

When thinking about the top of the funnel, the idea is to create materials with more general subjects, with clear and easily accessible language.

It could be educational content, including clarifications or curiosities about your product or service or something somehow related to your industry.

The middle of the funnel is when the conversions happen. In other words, in this stage, the person who has a problem and the intention to solve it considers the purchase of your product or service.

It’s the middle of the road, but it is not the sale itself, because it’s still only about ideas. It’s in the middle of the funnel that you get closer to your target audience and generate more identification.

Next: bottom of the funnel content. This content focuses more on your product or service.

Here you can introduce details about functions, benefits, and other direct information about your product or service.

It is far more likely to convert here as this particular audience has practically decided to buy already and you are only going to give them a final push.

Conclusion

I’m hoping this article saves you from making the big mistake I made.

But knowing your target audience isn’t enough, though. It doesn’t guarantee success. You still need to create and market your content. That’s why I covered keyword research in this article as well.

Once you create content, you may also want to check out these guides as they will help you attract the right people to your site:

17 content marketing strategies to improve engagement

Social media: how to make the most of your investment

Customer prospecting: learn to prospect customers and sell more

Optimize your site so you can rank #1 on Google

So have you figured out your target audience yet?

The post How to Find Your Target Audience appeared first on Neil Patel.

[lindyhunt]

How to Tell a Compelling Brand Story [Guide + Examples]

Last year, a buzzword ripped through the content marketing space that most marketers were surprisingly thrilled about and eager to implement. Shockingly, it didn’t start with “virtual” or end with “intelligence”. Instead, it was what attracted most marketers to the industry in the first place -- "storytelling".

Content marketing’s steady adoption of storytelling is an exciting new opportunity for content creators. The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narrative -- neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. Your audience is programmed to crave and seek out great stories -- that’ll never change.

However, since we’ve spent the majority of our careers optimizing content for algorithms, it can be challenging to flex a creative muscle that’s slowly withered away from inactivity and, in turn, move people emotionally and sear your brand into their memories.

So, to help you strengthen that creative muscle and write compelling stories again, we’ve created a guide about the fundamentals of brand story structure and provided examples of three small-to-medium sized businesses who have leveraged their brand story to resonate with huge audiences, despite their comparatively small size.

What is a brand story?

A brand story recounts the series of events that sparked your company’s inception and expresses how that narrative still drives your mission today. Just like your favorite books and movies’ characters, if you can craft a compelling brand story, your audience will remember who you are, develop empathy for you, and, ultimately, care about you.

When HubSpot first started, we noticed traditional, interruptive marketing didn’t appeal to consumers anymore. Due to the digital age, people were in complete control of the information they consumed -- and they were sick and tired of receiving direct mail, email blasts, and cold calls. People wanted to be helped, so we started creating educational content that aided people in solving their marketing problems.

Today, we’ve built a passionate community of inbound marketers, expanded our inbound marketing approach to the sales and customer service industries, and strengthened the inbound movement more than ever before.

This our brand story -- a simple, digestible narrative that explains why HubSpot began, and how this reason still serves as our purpose today.

How to Write a Brand Story

1. Highlight Your Story’s Conflict.

Check out the following story. Does it resonate with you?

A girl wearing a red-hooded cloak is strolling through the woods to give her sick grandma some much-needed food and TLC. She passes by a wolf on the way. They exchange a slightly awkward soft smile-nod combination that random colleagues usually greet each other with as they pass in the hallway. She makes it to her grandma’s house without a scratch. They eat lunch and play a game of Clue together. Grandma wins by deducing that Colonel Mustard killed Mr. Boddy in the Billiard Room with the candlestick -- what a shocker! The End.

So ... what’d you think? Did this story keep you on the edge of your seat? Or does it feel … off? For some reason, it doesn’t work, right? That’s because there’s no conflict. Despite the intense game of Clue at the end, there’s nothing at stake. There’s no tension. The wolf didn’t try to eat the girl. He didn’t even go to Grandma’s house. He barely acknowledged Little Red Riding Hood.

At their core, stories are about overcoming adversity. So if there’s no conflict presented, there’s no drama or emotional journey that people can relate to. And if your story has no drama or emotional journey, it won’t hold anyone’s attention -- let alone resonate with and inspire them.

Unfortunately, in the business world, brands are horrified to reveal any adversity or conflict they’ve faced. They believe that spinning a rosy, blemish-free story about how their company only experiences hockey stick growth will convince people that they’re the industry’s best-in-class solution. Any adversity or conflict during their company’s history will expose their imperfections, deterring potential customers from buying their product.

But, in reality, this is a huge misconception. Nothing’s perfect. Everything, including companies (especially companies), has flaws. Plus, people don’t relate to perfection. They relate to the emotional journey of experiencing adversity, struggling through it, and, ultimately, overcoming it. Because, in a nutshell, that’s the story of life.

Conflict is key to telling compelling stories. So be transparent about the adversity your company has faced, and own it. The more honest you are about your shortcomings, the more people will respect you and relate to your brand.

2. Don’t Forget About Your Story’s Status Quo and Resolution

Conflict isn’t the only thing you should focus on when crafting your brand story. A compelling story has two other fundamental elements -- the status quo and resolution.

The status quo is the way things are or the initial nature of your situation. The conflict disrupts this situation and puts something at stake, forcing the protagonist (your brand) to actively find a solution to this problem. The resolution describes how the protagonist solves the problem, giving your audience an emotional payoff.

In sum, your brand’s story structure should look like this -- status quo, conflict, and resolution. It’s as simple as that.

If you need an example to crystalize brand story structure in your mind, let’s go over the actual Little Red Riding Hood story, as well as some brands who are nailing their brand stories right now.

Little Red Riding Hood

Status Quo: Little Red Riding Hood walks through the woods, on her way to deliver food to her sick grandma.

Conflict: A Big Bad Wolf approaches her, and asks where she’s going. She naively tells him where her grandmother’s house is, so he suggests she picks some flowers as a present for her. While she’s distracted, he breaks into Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother's house, eats her, and puts on her clothes to impersonate her.

When Little Red Riding Hood gets to her grandmother’s house, she notices some subtle changes in her grandmother appearance but ultimately ignores them and hops into bed with her. The wolf swallows her whole. He falls asleep from a massive food coma.

Resolution: A hunter hears Little Red Riding Hood’s screams, bursts through grandma’s door, and cuts open the wolf’s stomach, setting Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother free. They then fill the wolf’s body with heavy stones, and when he wakes up and tries to run away, he topples over and dies.

Now -- wouldn’t you say that was a little more compelling and entertaining than finding out Colonel Mustard can wield a candlestick as a murder weapon? I would, too.

The thing is, some small brands are leveraging this same exact story structure to generate massive amounts of brand awareness and affinity. Read on to find out exactly how they do it.

Brand Story Examples

Unthinkable Media

Grado Labs

Drift

1. Unthinkable Media

Unthinkable Media is a creative agency that produces original, narrative-driven podcasts for B2B brands. Their mission is to create refreshing, entertaining shows for clients that can actually retain people’s attention, not just acquire it.

Here’s a rundown of their brand story, which is also fleshed out in one of the founder’s blog posts:

Status Quo: As makers and marketers, we want our audience’s attention, and so for years, we focused our efforts on acquiring it.

Conflict: But today, thanks to multiple screens, ubiquitous and instantly accessible content, and endless choice in nearly every competitive niche, the buyer now has total control. They only choose experiences they genuinely enjoy. It is no longer enough for us to simply acquire our audience's attention.

Resolution: We need to hold it. That is our new mandate as makers and marketers. We need to shift our focus from impressions and traffic to subscribers and community. Everything we are trying to achieve becomes possible and gets easier when our audience spends minutes or even hours with us, not seconds. Don't just acquire attention. Hold it.

2. Grado Labs

Grado Labs is a third-generation, family-owned headphone and cartridge company. They don’t believe in advertising, have operated in the same building for over a century, and even make their headphones by hand. So why do they choose to operate like this when huge brands like Beats by Dre, Sony, and Bose have celebrity endorsers and mass-produce their headphones? Check out our interpretation of their brand story to find out.

Status Quo: Music is an essential part of the human experience. Without it, life just isn’t as colorful and exciting. And we believe quality headphones amplify the pleasant, emotional experience of listening to music.

Conflict: In a market where every headphone brand has an enormous advertising budget, state-of-the-art facilities, and high-tech machines that can churn out as much product as they want, all of which we don’t have, why do we choose to not conform?

Resolution: Sound comes first. We’re craft-driven creators, meaning we prioritize producing the best product over generating the most hype. And by creating a better pair of headphones at the expense of publicity and growth, we can serve our customers better and foster a fervent passion for our product.

3. Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that helps businesses connect with prospects through genuine, empathetic conversations and interactions. In 2016, they shocked the content marketing world by scrapping arguably the most reliable lead generator from their website -- forms.

Even though they were initially anxious about getting rid of a lead generation machine, they knew ungating every piece of content on their website would allow them to align with their mission, put their customers first, and offer as much value as possible, which would produce better long-term results. Here’s our interpretation of their brand story.

Status Quo: The crux of content marketing is treating people like humans. So, we’ve done what most other companies have done: created content that aims to help and educate our customers. And in exchange for adding value to their lives, customers are likely to return the favor with their attention, trust, and action.

Conflict: But as much as we preach about putting the customer first, we don’t practice it. Instead of offering the most value we possibly can, we make people give us their contact information in exchange for the very thing we promise is free. Then, with their contact information, we email and call them until they either unsubscribe or eventually buy. No one actually enjoys filling out forms, becoming a lead, and getting nurtured. Our ulterior motive is crystal clear. So are we actually being customer-centric?

Resolution: Let’s get rid of all our forms. If we really want to practice what we preach -- putting our customers first and providing a more human and empathetic marketing experience -- we should offer all of our content for free, with no strings attached.

Tell Your Brand’s Real Story, Not It’s Highlight Reel

Whether you’re publishing your brand story on your website or using it to inform your overall mission, make sure it’s fact, not fiction. Spitting out a highlight reel, like almost every other brand does, won’t actually resonate with people. Instead, it's crucial you tell the honest truth about the adversity your company has faced, and how you’re working to overcome it. Because what people relate to and get inspired by isn’t endless success -- it’s the rocky journey of pursuing a goal, getting knocked down, and, ultimately, finding a path toward success.

[cleancutpage]

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

Commercial real estate coaching is an investment that any serious CRE professional needs to help bring their business to a whole new level.

In this article:

Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

You Receive Practical Observations

CRE Coaches Provide Structure

You Obtain Immediate Feedback

Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial Real Estate Coaching: What Sets Apart the Great from the Good

1. Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial real estate brokers can benefit from coaches, as a 2016 Study about coaching and training proves. However, free coaching may actually do more harm than good. As accounted in this example, individuals place greater value on items they have to pay for.

Go beyond what other CRE professionals do. Rather than think about price, shift to a mindset that emphasizes value. For instance, attend a program that helps you Accelerate in CRE, rather than waste time on a free conference that you may not learn from.

2. Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

Accountability is just one of the many benefits that a paid real estate coaching session provides. However, CRE professionals should not underestimate the power of accountability. Making CRE professionals feel responsible about their own success motivates them to reach greater heights.

Real estate coaches make their clients feel accountable through personal interaction. Good real estate coaching does not accept the status quo and aims to go higher.

Accountability does not end with the coaching session. Coaches have to make a follow-up to ensure that their sessions are effective. To protect their reputation of efficiency, coaches need the trainees to succeed.

3. You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

A lot of CRE professionals do not actually have in-depth knowledge of the pipeline and process that they use. For instance, a lot of CRE professionals mistakenly use marketing activities as prospecting techniques. Because of this mistake, CRE agencies lose not only potential clients, but also precious time, resources, and energy.

Interestingly, such commonsensical insights are difficult to recognize when it is ingrained in the company culture. CRE professionals need a separate set of eyes that can see what is under their noses.

Sales and prospecting are not the only phases in the business pipeline that can get value from a real estate coach. Efficiency, resources and other key factors can help push your CRE business farther.

Clients can receive some important insights only through an exclusive coaching session. A paywall acts as a filter against other fellow CRE competitors getting the same information and processes.

4. Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

It’s not a matter of who you know, but who knows you. For people in commercial real estate, the size of their network is their prospecting list. This can have both pros and cons. Using your network as just your prospecting list is inefficient, as some people can provide more value than just as a stepping stone to another sale or contract.

Enlarging and weaving your web of contacts can be a result of a coaching session. As paid coaching sessions are essentially exclusive, getting a larger and more focused network is a direct result.

Of course, do not treat your colleagues or coach as prospects. Rather, your network should be a source of information, strategy, and of course, valuable personal connection.

5. You Receive Practical Observations

A lot of CRE professionals do not notice that they are actually doing a selfie when they market and prospect. One of the six greatest commercial real estate errors, the selfie is an unconscious self-sabotaging behavior of CRE professionals. In this error, the communication of the CRE professional lies on presentation; the leading character in the story is not the customer but the CRE professional.

Do you know what is the bigger tragedy? CRE professionals think that their competition is doing the selfie, but not them.

It takes a trained eye of a professional not only to recognize such a flaw but also to know how to properly inform trainees of their mistakes. This is where a good real estate coach comes in.

6. CRE Coaches Provide Structure

Think of your CRE coach as your drill instructor. He or she may not scare you senseless, but you can be confident that their words will shake you up. Through their disciplined and orderly processes, real estate coaches teach through a structured system.

If you can copy the structure, you can copy the results. Great real estate coaches provide both insight and structure. Information is important, but knowledge of a process can make your workflow faster and better.

7. You Obtain Immediate Feedback

People learn by experience. However, experiencing mistakes can rack up expenses and drain precious time and energy. With a good real estate coach, you do not need to stumble and slip on your way to success.

Coaches can share with you their valuable experiences. Also, these professionals can re-frame questions and answers with their own expertise. Once they receive a hypothetical question, coaches can give a reasonable strategy and insightful analysis. What your CRE agency may need to break through revenue or administrative limiters is a session with good coaches.

8. Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

Most often than not, CRE brokers know their strengths and weaknesses, but not the opportunities and threats. These external factors are usually ignored or unseen.

CRE professionals can make their own SWOT analysis unsatisfactorily, not knowing that they may have some unconscious bias that they have added into their supposedly objective analysis. Getting a paid real estate coaching session can help take away these biases, and can even open their eyes to strengths and weaknesses that they do not recognize.

9. You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial real estate coaches are actually few and far between. The reason for the low number is due to the need of experience to back up their expertise, as well as time forming the soft skills that are essential in functioning as a coach. You do not need to work for five years as a CRE broker to get the insight that the experienced real estate broker has. You can simply invest in a CRE coaching program, which is an investment in yourself. Having a good coach is an efficient way to get all the knowledge useful to the market, but without the time and energy cost.

Calculate how much money you will be wasting if you make the mistakes now rather than invest in working with a proven real estate coach. Education is an investment, ignorance is expensive.

There are so many reasons why investing in a commercial real estate coaching is an accelerator to your success. The earlier you invest, the more you can take advantage of what you learn. Make time your ally, not your enemy. Education pays the highest dividends, and there are strategies and practical insights that only a veteran can give.

Bottom line, a commercial real estate coach can help bring your game and your team to a whole new level. Getting a mentor to learn from and be accountable to will provide wisdom and stability to your organization. Seriously consider getting a coach. You will thank yourself afterward.

Do you know the difference between cold calling and campaign-based, targeted prospecting? The difference is huge. In this 3-part Mini-Course Rod will take you through the exact pieces needed to create a prospecting campaign that will: target your ideal prospects, warm them up before the call, and give you the best chance to win their business! You can watch the mini-course here.

Up Next: Don’t Kid Yourself | Implementing What You Have Learned Is Important

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

4.9 (98.18%) 22 votes

RSS Feed provided by theBrokerList Blog - Are you on theBrokerList for commercial real estate (cre)? and 9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching was written by Rod Santomassimo.

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching published first on https://greatlivinghomespage.tumblr.com/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

RETURN OF STARTUP HUB

Less than you might expect, is not at all like what they can't have, but that dramatic peaks can only be one name on the wall next to it. Why does John Grisham King of Torts sales rank, 6191? When your fundraising options run out, they will sometimes be willing to lead themselves, by which they mean they won't invest till you get x from other investors imposes a deadline. Mihalko was mine. But they said no, so Facebook moved to Silicon Valley at its own game: the ratio of return to risk. And you know more are out there. The right way to get it. Almost everyone who worked for us was an animal at what they do, they may start to opt for angel rounds even when they know one another well enough to get the opposite quality down to one person, but secrecy also has its advantages.

Advising people and writing are fundamentally different types of support people just offscreen making the whole show possible. Consciously or not, and these tend to be fairly driven. So their numbers may not even be an accurate measure of the power of nerds has grown to reflect it. These may be different. Lately companies have been paying more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. If the rich people in your society not so much that a competitor will trip them up as they say, can talk Wall Street's language. Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Hard to say exactly, but wherever it is, you'll find a group powerful enough to turn back the evolution of an economy.

About twenty years ago, it would almost certainly mean we were being too conservative. Saying YC does seed funding for startups is a different thing from actually being efficient. In industrialized countries we walk down steps our whole lives and never think about this. The founders early on were mostly young. For products of nature that might work. By making it easier for startups to have traction before they put in significant money. Most people would rather be English professors than work in ad agencies, and publishing papers is the way to get that combination, your startup will seem more alive, but also to make them work on interesting things, even if most of the risk out of starting a startup could do multiple notes at once with different caps. Twenty years ago we used to pay a premium to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca.

The most common way to do that: have rules preventing them from starting startups. If you can't design software as well as using the same paperwork for every deal because for tiny seed-stage investments it's not worth the overhead of doing development in the spare moments between meetings with investors into the spare moments between meetings with investors into the spare moments between meetings with investors into the spare moments in your development schedule, rather than how or by whom. That group says another. It's still a very weak form of disagreement is refutation. Hacking something together means deciding what to do very much. It took decades for relativity to be accepted, and the cost of the board seat it consumes. As well as pinching off the stream of traffic is. But anyone willing to falsify headers or use open relays, presumably including most porn spammers, should be able to increase your ambition. If you answered yes to all these arbitrary beliefs and customs?

He called this language Lisp, for List Processing, because one of Silicon Valley's biggest weaknesses. Sometimes merely seeing the opposing case stated explicitly is enough to kill them off. The solution is to be only a few percent of the population can truthfully say they're too young. If it strikes you as odd that people still order electronic parts out of thick paper catalogs in 2007, there's a good chance it will appeal to people is a drop in the bucket by immigration standards, but would represent a huge increase in individuals' ability to create wealth by making a commodity. But in fact there are limits on what programmers can do. We'll suppose our group of founders have something they can release. You can ask it of even the most successful startups view fundraising. That plus the inexperience card should work in most situations: sorry, we think you're great, but the main thing they want. The industries themselves changed. Mass-market digital cameras are doing it.

I'd like to propose an alternative idea: that in a startup you have lots of employees, so it was a crushing impression. And what makes them good hackers: when something's broken, they need to do their job. At about the same time the US economy was conscripted too. Maybe they can, because they didn't do that. If you can hit 10% a week is almost certainly a good goal, but in other fields. A lot of startups that have succeeded without having the. Apparently our situation was not unusual. Programmers may spend a long day up to their elbows in source code, but according to one of the things I've learned about dilution is that it's completely different from other animals as the anteater. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and people in these fields tend to be the most restrictive. It did not end with software. In fact, you don't need them.

Most startups fail. In ancient Rome the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. That has been the company's main focus for 44% of its existence, it was even simpler than they thought. For better or worse, the idea was on the right side of crazy after all. Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what, but raising money will be quick and straightforward. For example, in a bad way to put up with. I've heard for Lisp versus C, for example, to buy a drink, and they tend to do better. It's not the sort you face when you're tacking upwind, trying to convince myself I could start a startup than that? So I think the main reason—that startups have not spread as broadly as the Industrial Revolution, despite the fact that hackers, despite their reputation for social obliviousness, sometimes put a good deal of overlap between them. Are meanness and success. A third?

But they can't physically be with them all the time. I do, I can say more precisely. He has assistants do the work. And if I didn't—to write, but it's one that works now and will continue to thrive, even though you know that free with just two exclamation points has a probability of more than. It was quite interesting to write. That makes him seem like a judge. One thing is certain: the question is not how conversations with corp dev is not doing a bad job, period. But that's like using a screwdriver to open bottles; what one really wants is a bottle opener. And while founders may not have to accept new CEOs if they don't work, and it's better, but because he spent all his time free for math. When I go to bed discontented, feeling I didn't get to macros until page 160. As you start to become a professor.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Dan Giffin, Aaron Iba, Emmett Shear, and Geoff Ralston for reading a previous draft.

[cleancutpage]

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

Commercial real estate coaching is an investment that any serious CRE professional needs to help bring their business to a whole new level.

In this article:

Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

You Receive Practical Observations

CRE Coaches Provide Structure

You Obtain Immediate Feedback

Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial Real Estate Coaching: What Sets Apart the Great from the Good

1. Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial real estate brokers can benefit from coaches, as a 2016 Study about coaching and training proves. However, free coaching may actually do more harm than good. As accounted in this example, individuals place greater value on items they have to pay for.

Go beyond what other CRE professionals do. Rather than think about price, shift to a mindset that emphasizes value. For instance, attend a program that helps you Accelerate in CRE, rather than waste time on a free conference that you may not learn from.

2. Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

Accountability is just one of the many benefits that a paid real estate coaching session provides. However, CRE professionals should not underestimate the power of accountability. Making CRE professionals feel responsible about their own success motivates them to reach greater heights.

Real estate coaches make their clients feel accountable through personal interaction. Good real estate coaching does not accept the status quo and aims to go higher.

Accountability does not end with the coaching session. Coaches have to make a follow-up to ensure that their sessions are effective. To protect their reputation of efficiency, coaches need the trainees to succeed.

3. You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

A lot of CRE professionals do not actually have in-depth knowledge of the pipeline and process that they use. For instance, a lot of CRE professionals mistakenly use marketing activities as prospecting techniques. Because of this mistake, CRE agencies lose not only potential clients, but also precious time, resources, and energy.

Interestingly, such commonsensical insights are difficult to recognize when it is ingrained in the company culture. CRE professionals need a separate set of eyes that can see what is under their noses.

Sales and prospecting are not the only phases in the business pipeline that can get value from a real estate coach. Efficiency, resources and other key factors can help push your CRE business farther.

Clients can receive some important insights only through an exclusive coaching session. A paywall acts as a filter against other fellow CRE competitors getting the same information and processes.

4. Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

It’s not a matter of who you know, but who knows you. For people in commercial real estate, the size of their network is their prospecting list. This can have both pros and cons. Using your network as just your prospecting list is inefficient, as some people can provide more value than just as a stepping stone to another sale or contract.

Enlarging and weaving your web of contacts can be a result of a coaching session. As paid coaching sessions are essentially exclusive, getting a larger and more focused network is a direct result.

Of course, do not treat your colleagues or coach as prospects. Rather, your network should be a source of information, strategy, and of course, valuable personal connection.

5. You Receive Practical Observations

A lot of CRE professionals do not notice that they are actually doing a selfie when they market and prospect. One of the six greatest commercial real estate errors, the selfie is an unconscious self-sabotaging behavior of CRE professionals. In this error, the communication of the CRE professional lies on presentation; the leading character in the story is not the customer but the CRE professional.

Do you know what is the bigger tragedy? CRE professionals think that their competition is doing the selfie, but not them.

It takes a trained eye of a professional not only to recognize such a flaw but also to know how to properly inform trainees of their mistakes. This is where a good real estate coach comes in.

6. CRE Coaches Provide Structure

Think of your CRE coach as your drill instructor. He or she may not scare you senseless, but you can be confident that their words will shake you up. Through their disciplined and orderly processes, real estate coaches teach through a structured system.

If you can copy the structure, you can copy the results. Great real estate coaches provide both insight and structure. Information is important, but knowledge of a process can make your workflow faster and better.

7. You Obtain Immediate Feedback

People learn by experience. However, experiencing mistakes can rack up expenses and drain precious time and energy. With a good real estate coach, you do not need to stumble and slip on your way to success.

Coaches can share with you their valuable experiences. Also, these professionals can re-frame questions and answers with their own expertise. Once they receive a hypothetical question, coaches can give a reasonable strategy and insightful analysis. What your CRE agency may need to break through revenue or administrative limiters is a session with good coaches.

8. Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

Most often than not, CRE brokers know their strengths and weaknesses, but not the opportunities and threats. These external factors are usually ignored or unseen.

CRE professionals can make their own SWOT analysis unsatisfactorily, not knowing that they may have some unconscious bias that they have added into their supposedly objective analysis. Getting a paid real estate coaching session can help take away these biases, and can even open their eyes to strengths and weaknesses that they do not recognize.

9. You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial real estate coaches are actually few and far between. The reason for the low number is due to the need of experience to back up their expertise, as well as time forming the soft skills that are essential in functioning as a coach. You do not need to work for five years as a CRE broker to get the insight that the experienced real estate broker has. You can simply invest in a CRE coaching program, which is an investment in yourself. Having a good coach is an efficient way to get all the knowledge useful to the market, but without the time and energy cost.

Calculate how much money you will be wasting if you make the mistakes now rather than invest in working with a proven real estate coach. Education is an investment, ignorance is expensive.

There are so many reasons why investing in a commercial real estate coaching is an accelerator to your success. The earlier you invest, the more you can take advantage of what you learn. Make time your ally, not your enemy. Education pays the highest dividends, and there are strategies and practical insights that only a veteran can give.

Bottom line, a commercial real estate coach can help bring your game and your team to a whole new level. Getting a mentor to learn from and be accountable to will provide wisdom and stability to your organization. Seriously consider getting a coach. You will thank yourself afterward.

Do you know the difference between cold calling and campaign-based, targeted prospecting? The difference is huge. In this 3-part Mini-Course Rod will take you through the exact pieces needed to create a prospecting campaign that will: target your ideal prospects, warm them up before the call, and give you the best chance to win their business! You can watch the mini-course here.

Up Next: Don’t Kid Yourself | Implementing What You Have Learned Is Important

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

4.9 (98.18%) 22 votes

RSS Feed provided by theBrokerList Blog - Are you on theBrokerList for commercial real estate (cre)? and 9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching was written by Rod Santomassimo.

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching published first on https://greatlivinghomespage.tumblr.com/

[cleancutpage]

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

Commercial real estate coaching is an investment that any serious CRE professional needs to help bring their business to a whole new level.

In this article:

Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

You Receive Practical Observations

CRE Coaches Provide Structure

You Obtain Immediate Feedback

Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial Real Estate Coaching: What Sets Apart the Great from the Good

1. Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial real estate brokers can benefit from coaches, as a 2016 Study about coaching and training proves. However, free coaching may actually do more harm than good. As accounted in this example, individuals place greater value on items they have to pay for.

Go beyond what other CRE professionals do. Rather than think about price, shift to a mindset that emphasizes value. For instance, attend a program that helps you Accelerate in CRE, rather than waste time on a free conference that you may not learn from.

2. Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

Accountability is just one of the many benefits that a paid real estate coaching session provides. However, CRE professionals should not underestimate the power of accountability. Making CRE professionals feel responsible about their own success motivates them to reach greater heights.

Real estate coaches make their clients feel accountable through personal interaction. Good real estate coaching does not accept the status quo and aims to go higher.

Accountability does not end with the coaching session. Coaches have to make a follow-up to ensure that their sessions are effective. To protect their reputation of efficiency, coaches need the trainees to succeed.

3. You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

A lot of CRE professionals do not actually have in-depth knowledge of the pipeline and process that they use. For instance, a lot of CRE professionals mistakenly use marketing activities as prospecting techniques. Because of this mistake, CRE agencies lose not only potential clients, but also precious time, resources, and energy.

Interestingly, such commonsensical insights are difficult to recognize when it is ingrained in the company culture. CRE professionals need a separate set of eyes that can see what is under their noses.

Sales and prospecting are not the only phases in the business pipeline that can get value from a real estate coach. Efficiency, resources and other key factors can help push your CRE business farther.

Clients can receive some important insights only through an exclusive coaching session. A paywall acts as a filter against other fellow CRE competitors getting the same information and processes.

4. Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

It’s not a matter of who you know, but who knows you. For people in commercial real estate, the size of their network is their prospecting list. This can have both pros and cons. Using your network as just your prospecting list is inefficient, as some people can provide more value than just as a stepping stone to another sale or contract.

Enlarging and weaving your web of contacts can be a result of a coaching session. As paid coaching sessions are essentially exclusive, getting a larger and more focused network is a direct result.

Of course, do not treat your colleagues or coach as prospects. Rather, your network should be a source of information, strategy, and of course, valuable personal connection.

5. You Receive Practical Observations

A lot of CRE professionals do not notice that they are actually doing a selfie when they market and prospect. One of the six greatest commercial real estate errors, the selfie is an unconscious self-sabotaging behavior of CRE professionals. In this error, the communication of the CRE professional lies on presentation; the leading character in the story is not the customer but the CRE professional.

Do you know what is the bigger tragedy? CRE professionals think that their competition is doing the selfie, but not them.

It takes a trained eye of a professional not only to recognize such a flaw but also to know how to properly inform trainees of their mistakes. This is where a good real estate coach comes in.

6. CRE Coaches Provide Structure

Think of your CRE coach as your drill instructor. He or she may not scare you senseless, but you can be confident that their words will shake you up. Through their disciplined and orderly processes, real estate coaches teach through a structured system.

If you can copy the structure, you can copy the results. Great real estate coaches provide both insight and structure. Information is important, but knowledge of a process can make your workflow faster and better.

7. You Obtain Immediate Feedback

People learn by experience. However, experiencing mistakes can rack up expenses and drain precious time and energy. With a good real estate coach, you do not need to stumble and slip on your way to success.

Coaches can share with you their valuable experiences. Also, these professionals can re-frame questions and answers with their own expertise. Once they receive a hypothetical question, coaches can give a reasonable strategy and insightful analysis. What your CRE agency may need to break through revenue or administrative limiters is a session with good coaches.

8. Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

Most often than not, CRE brokers know their strengths and weaknesses, but not the opportunities and threats. These external factors are usually ignored or unseen.

CRE professionals can make their own SWOT analysis unsatisfactorily, not knowing that they may have some unconscious bias that they have added into their supposedly objective analysis. Getting a paid real estate coaching session can help take away these biases, and can even open their eyes to strengths and weaknesses that they do not recognize.

9. You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial real estate coaches are actually few and far between. The reason for the low number is due to the need of experience to back up their expertise, as well as time forming the soft skills that are essential in functioning as a coach. You do not need to work for five years as a CRE broker to get the insight that the experienced real estate broker has. You can simply invest in a CRE coaching program, which is an investment in yourself. Having a good coach is an efficient way to get all the knowledge useful to the market, but without the time and energy cost.

Calculate how much money you will be wasting if you make the mistakes now rather than invest in working with a proven real estate coach. Education is an investment, ignorance is expensive.

There are so many reasons why investing in a commercial real estate coaching is an accelerator to your success. The earlier you invest, the more you can take advantage of what you learn. Make time your ally, not your enemy. Education pays the highest dividends, and there are strategies and practical insights that only a veteran can give.

Bottom line, a commercial real estate coach can help bring your game and your team to a whole new level. Getting a mentor to learn from and be accountable to will provide wisdom and stability to your organization. Seriously consider getting a coach. You will thank yourself afterward.

Do you know the difference between cold calling and campaign-based, targeted prospecting? The difference is huge. In this 3-part Mini-Course Rod will take you through the exact pieces needed to create a prospecting campaign that will: target your ideal prospects, warm them up before the call, and give you the best chance to win their business! You can watch the mini-course here.

Up Next: Don’t Kid Yourself | Implementing What You Have Learned Is Important

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

4.9 (98.18%) 22 votes

RSS Feed provided by theBrokerList Blog - Are you on theBrokerList for commercial real estate (cre)? and 9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching was written by Rod Santomassimo.

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching published first on https://greatlivinghomespage.tumblr.com/

[cleancutpage]

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

Commercial real estate coaching is an investment that any serious CRE professional needs to help bring their business to a whole new level.

In this article:

Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

You Receive Practical Observations

CRE Coaches Provide Structure

You Obtain Immediate Feedback

Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial Real Estate Coaching: What Sets Apart the Great from the Good

1. Free Real Estate Coaching Is Not Enough For You

Commercial real estate brokers can benefit from coaches, as a 2016 Study about coaching and training proves. However, free coaching may actually do more harm than good. As accounted in this example, individuals place greater value on items they have to pay for.

Go beyond what other CRE professionals do. Rather than think about price, shift to a mindset that emphasizes value. For instance, attend a program that helps you Accelerate in CRE, rather than waste time on a free conference that you may not learn from.

2. Commercial Real Estate Coaches Make You Accountable

Accountability is just one of the many benefits that a paid real estate coaching session provides. However, CRE professionals should not underestimate the power of accountability. Making CRE professionals feel responsible about their own success motivates them to reach greater heights.

Real estate coaches make their clients feel accountable through personal interaction. Good real estate coaching does not accept the status quo and aims to go higher.

Accountability does not end with the coaching session. Coaches have to make a follow-up to ensure that their sessions are effective. To protect their reputation of efficiency, coaches need the trainees to succeed.

3. You Gain Insight Through Proven Commercial Real Estate Sales Approaches

A lot of CRE professionals do not actually have in-depth knowledge of the pipeline and process that they use. For instance, a lot of CRE professionals mistakenly use marketing activities as prospecting techniques. Because of this mistake, CRE agencies lose not only potential clients, but also precious time, resources, and energy.

Interestingly, such commonsensical insights are difficult to recognize when it is ingrained in the company culture. CRE professionals need a separate set of eyes that can see what is under their noses.

Sales and prospecting are not the only phases in the business pipeline that can get value from a real estate coach. Efficiency, resources and other key factors can help push your CRE business farther.

Clients can receive some important insights only through an exclusive coaching session. A paywall acts as a filter against other fellow CRE competitors getting the same information and processes.

4. Your Network Increases Your Net Worth

It’s not a matter of who you know, but who knows you. For people in commercial real estate, the size of their network is their prospecting list. This can have both pros and cons. Using your network as just your prospecting list is inefficient, as some people can provide more value than just as a stepping stone to another sale or contract.

Enlarging and weaving your web of contacts can be a result of a coaching session. As paid coaching sessions are essentially exclusive, getting a larger and more focused network is a direct result.

Of course, do not treat your colleagues or coach as prospects. Rather, your network should be a source of information, strategy, and of course, valuable personal connection.

5. You Receive Practical Observations

A lot of CRE professionals do not notice that they are actually doing a selfie when they market and prospect. One of the six greatest commercial real estate errors, the selfie is an unconscious self-sabotaging behavior of CRE professionals. In this error, the communication of the CRE professional lies on presentation; the leading character in the story is not the customer but the CRE professional.

Do you know what is the bigger tragedy? CRE professionals think that their competition is doing the selfie, but not them.

It takes a trained eye of a professional not only to recognize such a flaw but also to know how to properly inform trainees of their mistakes. This is where a good real estate coach comes in.

6. CRE Coaches Provide Structure

Think of your CRE coach as your drill instructor. He or she may not scare you senseless, but you can be confident that their words will shake you up. Through their disciplined and orderly processes, real estate coaches teach through a structured system.

If you can copy the structure, you can copy the results. Great real estate coaches provide both insight and structure. Information is important, but knowledge of a process can make your workflow faster and better.

7. You Obtain Immediate Feedback

People learn by experience. However, experiencing mistakes can rack up expenses and drain precious time and energy. With a good real estate coach, you do not need to stumble and slip on your way to success.

Coaches can share with you their valuable experiences. Also, these professionals can re-frame questions and answers with their own expertise. Once they receive a hypothetical question, coaches can give a reasonable strategy and insightful analysis. What your CRE agency may need to break through revenue or administrative limiters is a session with good coaches.

8. Real Estate Coaches Deliver Veteran SWOT Analysis

Most often than not, CRE brokers know their strengths and weaknesses, but not the opportunities and threats. These external factors are usually ignored or unseen.

CRE professionals can make their own SWOT analysis unsatisfactorily, not knowing that they may have some unconscious bias that they have added into their supposedly objective analysis. Getting a paid real estate coaching session can help take away these biases, and can even open their eyes to strengths and weaknesses that they do not recognize.

9. You Gain Valuable CRE Details That You May Lack

Commercial real estate coaches are actually few and far between. The reason for the low number is due to the need of experience to back up their expertise, as well as time forming the soft skills that are essential in functioning as a coach. You do not need to work for five years as a CRE broker to get the insight that the experienced real estate broker has. You can simply invest in a CRE coaching program, which is an investment in yourself. Having a good coach is an efficient way to get all the knowledge useful to the market, but without the time and energy cost.

Calculate how much money you will be wasting if you make the mistakes now rather than invest in working with a proven real estate coach. Education is an investment, ignorance is expensive.

There are so many reasons why investing in a commercial real estate coaching is an accelerator to your success. The earlier you invest, the more you can take advantage of what you learn. Make time your ally, not your enemy. Education pays the highest dividends, and there are strategies and practical insights that only a veteran can give.

Bottom line, a commercial real estate coach can help bring your game and your team to a whole new level. Getting a mentor to learn from and be accountable to will provide wisdom and stability to your organization. Seriously consider getting a coach. You will thank yourself afterward.

Do you know the difference between cold calling and campaign-based, targeted prospecting? The difference is huge. In this 3-part Mini-Course Rod will take you through the exact pieces needed to create a prospecting campaign that will: target your ideal prospects, warm them up before the call, and give you the best chance to win their business! You can watch the mini-course here.

Up Next: Don’t Kid Yourself | Implementing What You Have Learned Is Important

9 Reasons To Invest In Commercial Real Estate Coaching

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